VIII 

LITERARY  MATERIAL  AND  ITS  TRANS- 
FORMATION 

50.  IN  considering  style,  we  are  dealing  with  form 
and  not  subject-matter.  For  that  reason,  we  may  ignore 
literary  invention,  which  is  the  development  of  ideas  more 
or  less  original,  and  give  attention  to  such  writing  as  has 
its  chief  use  and  function  in  the  organization  and  reshaping 
of  material  to  be  found  in  books  and  other  like  sources. 
In  the  form  in  which  it  is  found,  such  material  may  be 
not  at  all  literary.  It  may  be  hardly  more  than  a  body 
of  facts  that  need  interpretation.  The  first  effort,  then, 
should  be  to  find  in  the  facts  some  ground  for  a  live  personal 
interest.  Any  writing  that  is  to  have  a  good  literary  style 
must  be  written  from  the  standpoint  of  a  wish  to  make  a 
personal  interpretation  of  the  subject.  Literature  is  dis- 
tinguished from  writings  not  literary  by  the  presence  of 
that  personal  attitude  toward  the  subject  on  the  part  of 
the  writer.  In  one  sense,  a  presentation  of  facts  simply 
as  facts  can  have  no  style.  The  things  told  by  a  writer 
who  wishes  to  give  his  writing  style  must  be  told  as 
felt,  viewed,  believed,  cared  for  by  the  author  as  having 
a  peculiar  significance  for  him,  a  significance  that  he  is 
concerned  to  bring  home  to  his  readers. 

The  difficulty  of  taking  material  from  the  writings  and 
reports  of  others  and  so  transforming  it  that  it  becomes 
our  own  is  a  very  serious  one,  but  it  is  one  that  almost 
everyone  has  to  reckon  with.  Few  will  have  call  to 
engage  in  the  finer  processes  of  literary  creation,  but  skill 

70 


LITERARY  MATERIAL  AND  ITS  TRANSFORMATION        71 

in  this  lower  form  of  literary  craftsmanship  is  expected 
of  almost  everyone.  Let  it  be  borne  in  mind,  then,  that 
the  first  step  in  the  process  is  that  of  making  the  material 
that  one  must  consult  in  books  thoroughly  one's  own,  and 
that  the  next  process  is  that  of  establishing  in  one's  own 
mind  an  individual  understanding,  an  individual  conclu- 
sion and  belief  about  the  subject.  For  instance,  was  Napo- 
leon a  great  man  or  a  mean  man?  How  does  what  you 
have  been  able  to  learn  about  him  affect  you,  and  why 
should  someone  else  feel  in  that  way  about  him?  Let 
the  writer  ask  himself  such  questions,  and  soon  the  way 
before  him  will  be  clear.  Otherwise  he  may  get  into  the 
encyclopedia  manner  or  the  scientific  manner  or  the  chron- 
icle manner,  and  then  no  one  will  care  to  read  what  he 
has  written. 

51.  It  is  one  of  the  great  virtues  of  our  college  debating 
societies  that  they  give  students  vigorous  exercise  in  the 
business  of  supporting  a  point  of  view.  It  is  sometimes 
rather  remarkable  the  amount  of  fairly  substantial  reasons 
a  comparatively  commonplace  young  man  will  discover  in 
defense  of  the  proposition  that  an  income  tax  is  or  is  not 
a  very  valuable  bit  of  government  machinery.  There  is  a 
quite  simple  reason  for  that  resourcefulness.  By  the  terms 
of  the  proposition  stated  as  an  affirmation  and  by  his  ac- 
ceptance or  rejection  of  that  affirmation,  the  young  man 
has  put  himself  into  definite  relations  to  it.  That  clarifies 
his  thinking  and  gives  his  ideas  a  road  to  travel. 

It  is  always  a  writer's  first  business  to  find  what  is, 
for  him,  the  strongest  interest  in  a  subject.  He  should 
ask  what  in  it  arouses  his  sympathies  or  antipathies,  and 
why.  Then  he  should  think  not  so  much  of  writing  as 
of  making  others  have  his  interest  and  his  feeling.  Achiev- 
ing that  interest  for  himself  and  communicating  it  is,  after 
all,  the  whole  secret  of  style,  when  one  has  freed  himself 


THE  MECHANISM 

OF 

ENGLISH  STYLE 


BY 

LEWIS  WORTHINGTON  SMITH 

Professor  of  English  in  Drake  University 


NEW  YORK 
OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

AMERICAN  BRANCH:  35  WEST  82ND  STREET 

LONDON,  TORONTO,  MELBOURNE,  AND  BOMBAY 
HUMPHREY  MILFORD 

1916 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


Copyright,  igi6 

BY  OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

AMERICAN  BRANCH 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  is  the  result  of  a  conviction  that  telling  students 
how  to  write,  lecturing  at  them  or  to  them,  giving  them 
rules  and  principles  and  counselings  will  not  make  writers. 
Nothing  but  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  work  of 
those  who  have  in  some  high  degree  mastered  the  problem 
of  literary  expression  will  materially  help  them  to  a  like 
command  of  the  resources  of  style.  The  problem  is  one 
of  method.  How  shall  a  student  be  induced  to  focus  his 
attention  long  enough  and  minutely  enough  upon  the 
intricacies  of  written  speech?  How  can  he  be  led  to  turn 
sentences  over  and  over  until  the  rationale  of  their  form  and 
ordering  settles  into  his  consciousness  as  an  almost  instinc- 
tive understanding? 

There  may  be  various  satisfactory  answers  to  these  ques- 
tions, but  the  answer  of  this  volume  is  embodied  primarily 
in  Chapter  IX  and  in  the  reference  of  the  questions  there  to 
specific  portions  of  the  texts.  This  direct  application  of 
the  questions  will  be  found  at  the  bottom  of  each  page  of  the 
extracts.  No  doubt  to  many  this  method  will  seem  some- 
what mechanical.  It  has  been  developed  as  a  system  of  pre- 
cision, a  system  for  achieving  a  degree  of  scholarly  certitude 
in  a  subject  in  which  such  certitude  is  unusually  difficult. 
By  reason  of  that  difficulty,  ease  and  assurance  in  reaching 
this  end  cannot  be  expected  through  a  method  that  is  not 
fairly  rigid.  It  will  then  inevitably  be  more  or  less  me- 
chanical. If  the  individual  instructor  feels  that  he  has 
other  and  more  adequate  means  of  arriving  at  this  result 
there  is  no  reason  for  his  not  employing  his  own  system. 

iii 

345109 


iv  PREFACE 

The  selections  provided  for  the  study  of  style  are,  in  the 
writer's  judgment,  abundantly  various.  It  is  assumed  that 
no  one  will  wish  to  use  them  all.  Presumably  the  instructor 
will  make  choice  of  such  a  body  of  them  as  will  familiarize 
the  student  with  a  number  of  styles  rather  sharply  con- 
trasted. Dealt  with  in  the  detailed  fashion  for  which  pro- 
vision is  made,  and,  for  that  reason,  so  dealt  with  only  in 
part,  they  still  give  opportunity  for  some  considerable  range 
of  selection  on  the  part  of  the  teacher.  It  will  be  observed 
that  the  method  of  questioning  employed  in  the  book  permits 
of  a  great  deal  of  clerical  economy  in  use.  Should  it  seem 
advisable  to  study  anything  not  found  in  the  book,  the  work 
of  putting  the  numbers  and  letters  of  the  questions  into 
the  students'  hands  need  not  be  serious.  Further,  by  reason 
of  the  conciseness  of  the  method,  the  work  provided  in  the 
book  will  be  found  to  be  more  extensive  than  may  at  first 
appear. 

It  will  perhaps  be  worth  noting  that  this  way  of  studying 
the  work  of  the  writers  represented  in  the  selections  has  an 
organizing  tendency.  The  repetition  of  the  same  question 
is  a  piling  up  of  material  for  an  increasingly  obvious  process 
of  inductive  reasoning.  The  conclusion  reached  is  easily 
verified,  as  far  as  the  writing  presented  is  sufficient,  by  a 
reconsideration  of  its  grounds,  the  letter  itself,  or  number, 
furnishing  an  easy  index.  Further,  it  will  serve  as  an  index, 
not  to  the  one  selection  alone,  but  to  the  other  selections 
for  comparison.  Again,  the  instructor  will  find  it  a  simple 
matter  to  confine  the  study  of  any  selection  to  such  phases 
of  the  work  as  he  may  choose.  He  need  only  direct  students 
to  ignore  all  questions,  except,  for  instance,  f,  m,  and  s, 
or  such  others  as  he  may  elect. 

It  is  believed  that  while  the  selections  are  stylistically 
various,  they  are  various  also  in  their  interest,  both  his- 
torically and  humanly.  They  have  not  been  chosen,  how- 


PREFACE  v 

ever,  for  the  purpose  of  illustrating  the  growth  of  English 
style.  Largely  they  are  the  work  of  writers  of  our  own 
day,  and  much  of  the  material  is  copyright.  For  the  possi- 
bility of  including  such  fresh  work,  the  author  is  glad  to 
acknowledge  his  obligations  to  the  generosity  of  the  publish- 
ers who  are  specifically  named  in  connection  with  the  writ- 
ings which,  by  their  pleasant  permission,  are  reprinted  here. 

LEWIS  WORTH INGTON  SMITH. 
DRAKE  UNIVERSITY, 
Feb.  17,  1916. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE "i 

PART   I 
COMMENT 

CHAPTER 

I.     SKILL  AS  NATURAL  OR  ACQUIRED  ...         3 
II.     THE  QUALITIES  OF  STYLE n 

III.  SENTENCES  AND  THEIR  RELATIONS  ...       23 

IV.  WORDS,  THEIR  ASSOCIATIONS  AND  CONNOTA- 

TIONS ...  .  -35 

V.     THE  RHYTHM  OF  PROSE 47 

VI.     THE  LIVING  SPIRIT  AND  THE  DRESS  ...       56 
VII.     QUESTIONS  OF  USAGE 61 

VIII.     LITERARY  MATERIAL  AND  ITS  TRANSFORMA- 
TION     70 

IX.     KNOWING  How  AND  GETTING  THE  TOUCH    .       77 

PART   TWO 
TEXTS 

SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY.  The  Story  of  Ar gains  and  Par- 
thenia 85 

THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY.  Levana  and  Our  Lady  of 
Sorrows 92 

THOMAS   CARLYLE.     The   Opera   .       .       .     •  .       .  101 

THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY.  John  Bunyan  .       .  108 

NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.     The  Scarlet  Letter  .       .  125 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON.     Gifts 138 


viii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS.  The  Howadji  in  Syria  .  143 

ROBERT  Louis  STEVENSON.  The  English  Admirals  .  156 

AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL.  Truth-Hunting  ....  171 

H.  G.  WELLS.  Adolescence 184 

GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON.  Tolstoy  and  the  Cult  of 

Simplicity 201 

GERALD  STANLEY  LEE.  Is  it  Wrong  for  Good  People 

to  be  Efficient? 213 

EMILE  VERHAEREN.  The  Little  Villages  of  Flanders  221 

HENRY  JAMES.  The  Refugees  in  England  .  .  .  233 

THE  NEW  YORK  EVENING  POST.  The  Great  Triumph  246 

THE  NEW  YORK  SUN.  John  Galsworthy  .  .  .  250 

THE  NEW  REPUBLIC.  The  Undergraduate  .  .  .  262 

GRANT  SHOWERMAN.  The  Great  Vocation  .  .  .  267 
JAMES  HUNEKER.  Was  Leschetizky  a  Greater 

Teacher  than  Liszt? 276 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 285 

INDEX 287 


PART  I 
COMMENT 


SKILL  AS  NATURAL  OR  ACQUIRED 

i.  LEARNING  to  write  is  first  learning  that  you  must 
learn.  The  art  of  literature  is  the  greatest  of  the  arts,  the 
most  complex,  the  most  sophisticated,  the  most  highly  intel- 
lectual, and  the  most  exacting,  but  those  who  have  made 
little  or  no  progress  in  it  seem  to  be  very  generally  of  the 
opinion  that  it  is  not  a  thing  to  be  learned  as  one  learns 
to  paint  or  to  play  the  piano.  In  fact,  absurd  as  it  seems, 
this  misunderstanding  is  very  common  among  first-year  stu- 
dents in  college.  For  the  instructor,  a  prime  difficulty  in 
dealing  with  such  students  is  that  of  bringing  them  to  realize 
that  writing  is  not  a  spontaneous  and  natural  activity  that 
happens  to  succeed  better  in  some  cases  than  in  others. 
Youth  has  a  great  deal  of  faith  in  its  ability  to  crowd 
things  through  by  its  own  sheer  energy  in  defiance  of  the 
rules.  From  its  point  of  view,  they  are  rules,  rather  than 
laws,  a  distinction  of  some  importance.  Laws,  in  the  sense 
in  which  the  term  would  be  used  either  in  literary  criticism 
or  in  physics,  are  inherent  in  the  nature  of  things.  Rules 
are  man-imposed.  Disregard  of  rules,  even  those  put  on 
the  statute  books  for  the  regulation  of  conduct,  may  some- 
times be  evaded  without  penalty.  With  laws,  in  the  larger 
sense,  that  is  not  true.  They  may  be  but  imperfectly 
known.  Those  who  assume  to  speak  with  authority  in 
regard  to  them  may  state  them  inadequately  or  incorrectly. 
In  the  case  of  some  individual  writer  or  of  a  worker  in 
some  other  of  the  creative  arts,  they  may  seem  not  to  be 
operative,  but  a  sufficient  examination  will  always  reveal 

3 


4      .•         J-ii:E -MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

that  appearance  as  a  fallacy.  Laws  are  not  to  be  thought 
of  as  commands  or  prohibitions.  They  are  not  restraints, 
or  limitations.  Put  into  words,  they  are,  instead,  merely 
statements  of  the  way  things  work.  As  laws  of  writing  or 
painting  or  any  other  art,  they  are  intensely  human,  because 
they  are  laws  of  our  response  to  words,  colors,  sounds,  and 
all  the  varied  phenomena  of  the  world  that  the  artist,  in 
his  medium,  can  crowd  upon  our  minds  and  our  senses. 
Knowledge  of  these  laws  and  mastery  of  them  is  oppor- 
tunity and  power.  Giving  attention  to  them  is  not  lessen- 
ing our  own  individuality  and  shutting  its  activities  up 
within  a  prescribed  channel,  but  opening  doors  of  pos- 
sibility to  fuller  expression  of  ourselves,  surer,  freer,  and 
more  commanding. 

2.  In  this  matter,  nothing  can  be  more  instructive  than 
the  experience  of  great  writers.  Did  Shakespeare,  Dickens, 
Hawthorne  sit  down  in  a  fine  frenzy  of  inspiration  and 
dash  off  their  immortal  works,  or  did  they  think  out  some- 
what patiently  what  they  were  to  do  and  how  they  were 
to  do  it,  as  might  any  other  kind  of  workman?  They 
have  not  all  been  thoughtful  enough  to  make  report  on  the 
subject  for  us.  Shakespeare  is  notably  incommunicative 
with  regard  to  this  question,  as,  indeed,  with  regard  to 
practically  every  personal  question  that  we  might  ask. 
Nevertheless  there  is  one  outstanding  fact  that  certainly  has 
some  meaning  in  this  connection.  Shakespeare's  plays  are 
not  uniform.  The  earlier  ones  are  more  or  less  bad.  In 
reading  them,  perhaps  one  would  be  justified  in  saying  now 
and  then  that  this  is  downright  bad,  and  that  this  again  is 
very  bad.  From  such  facts  there  is  only  one  conclusion. 
The  world's  greatest  artist  learned  his  art.  Its  laws  were 
not  in  print  for  him  to  weigh  and  consider  comfortably 
under  an  electric  globe.  He  could  not  accept  them  as 
formulated  by  other  minds,  but  he  learned  them  and 


SKILL  AS  NATURAL  OR  ACQUIRED  5 

through  that  learning  came  to  better  and  higher  accomplish- 
ment. 

3.  There  are  other  writers,  however,  who  have  taken  us 
into  their  workshops  and  have  let  us  see  the  chips  and 
shavings  tossed  from  the  bench  to  the  floor.  Here  is  what 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  has  to  say  about  his  early  appren- 
ticeship to  the  literary  art. 

"  Whenever  I  read  a  book  or  a  passage  that  particularly 
pleased  me,  in  which  a  thing  was  said  or  an  effect  rendered 
with  propriety,  in  which  there  was  either  some  conspicuous 
force  or  some  happy  distinction  in  the  style,  I  must  sit  down 
at  once  and  set  myself  to  ape  that  quality.  I  was  unsuc- 
cessful, and  I  knew  it;  and  tried  again,  and  was  again 
unsuccessful  and  always  unsuccessful ;  but  at  least  in  these 
vain  bouts,  I  got  some  practice  in  rhythm,  in  harmony,  in 
construction  and  co-ordination  of  parts.  I  have  thus  played 
the  sedulous  ape  to  Hazlitt,  to  Lamb,  to  Wordsworth,  to 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  to  Defoe,  to  Hawthorne,  to  Mon- 
taigne, to  Baudelaire,  and  to  Obermann.  I  remember  one 
of  these  monkey  tricks,  which  was  called  The  Vanity  of 
Morals:  it  was  to  have  had  a  second  part,  The  Vanity  of 
Knowledge;  and  as  I  had  neither  morality  nor  scholarship, 
the  names  were  apt;  but  ;the  second  part  was  never 
attempted,  and  the  first  part  was  written  (which  is  my 
reason  for  recalling  it,  ghostlike,  from  its  ashes)  no  less 
than  three  times :  first  in  the  name  of  Hazlitt,  second  in 
the  manner  of  Ruskin,  who  had  cast  on  me  a  passing  spell, 
and  third,  in  a  laborious  pasticcio  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne. 
So  with  my  other  works :  Cain,  an  epic,  was  ( save  the 
mark!)  an  imitation  of  Sordello :  Robin  Hood,  a  tale  in 
verse,  took  an  eclectic  course  among  the  fields  of  Keats, 
Chaucer,  and  Morris :  in  Monmouth,  a  tragedy,  I  reclined 
on  the  bosom  of  Mr.  Swinburne;  in  my  innumerable  gouty- 
footed  lyrics  I  followed  many  masters ;  in  the  first  draft 
of  The  King's  Pardon,  a  tragedy,  I  was  on  the  trail  of  no 
lesser  man  than  John  Webster;  in  the  second  draft  of  the 
same  piece,  with  staggering  versatility,  I  had  shifted  my  alle- 
giance to  Congreve,  and  of  course  conceived  my  fable  in  a 
less  serious  vein — for  it  was  not  Congreve's  verse,  it  was 


6  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

his  exquisite  prose,  that  I  admired  and  sought  to  copy.  Even 
at  the  age  of  thirteen  I  had  tried  to  do  justice  to  the 
inhabitants  of  the  famous  city  of  Peebles  in  the  style  of  the 
Book  of  Snobs.  So  I  might  go  on  forever,  through  all  my 
abortive  novels,  and  down  to  my  later  plays,  of  which  I 
think  more  tenderly,  for  they  were  not  only  conceived  at 
first  under  the  bracing  influence  of  old  Dumas,  but  have 
met  with  resurrections :  one,  strangely  bettered  by  another 
hand,  came  on  the  stage  itself  and  was  played  by  bodily 
actors :  the  other,  originally  known  as  S  emir  amis:  a 
Tragedy,  I  have  observed  on  bookstalls  under  the  alias  of 
Prince  Otto.  But  enough  has  been  said  to  show  by  what 
arts  of  impersonation,  and  in  what  purely  ventriloquial 
efforts  I  first  saw  my  words  on  paper. 

"  That,  like  it  or  not,  is  the  way  to  learn  to  write ;  whether 
I  have  profited  or  not,  that  is  the  way.  It  was  so  Keats 
learned,  and  there  was  never  a  finer  temperament  for  liter- 
ature than  Keats's ;  it  was  so,  if  we  could  trace  it  out,  that 
all  men  have  learned ;  and  that  is  why  a  revival  of  letters 
is  always  accompanied  or  heralded  by  a  cast  back,  to  earlier 
or  fresher  models.  Perhaps  I  hear  some  one  cry  out: 
But  that  is  not  the  way  to  be  original.  It  is  not;  nor  is 
there  any  way  but  to  be  born  so.  Nor  yet,  if  you  are  born 
original,  is  there  anything  in  this  training  that  shall  clip 
the  wings  of  your  originality.  There  can  be  none  more 
original  than  Montaigne,  neither  could  any  be  more  unlike 
Cicero;  yet  no  craftsman  can  fail  to  see  how  much  the 
one  must  have  tried  in  his  time  to  imitate  the  other. 
Burns  is  the  very  type  of  a  prime  force  in  letters :  he  was 
of  all  men  the  most  imitative.  Shakespeare  himself,  the 
imperial,  proceeds  directly  from  a  school.  It  is  only  from 
a  school  that  we  can  have  good  writers ;  it  is  almost  invari- 
ably from  a  school  that  great  writers,  these  lawless  excep- 
tions, issue.  Nor  is  there  anything  here  that  should  astonish 
the  considerate.  Before  he  can  tell  what  cadences  he  truly 
prefers,  the  student  should  have  tried  all  that  are  pos- 
sible; before  he  can  choose  and  preserve  a  fitting  key  of 
words,  he  should  long  have  practiced  the  literary  scales; 
and  it  is  only  after  years  of  such  gymnastic  that  he  can  sit 
down  at  last,  legions  of  words  swarming  to  his  call,  dozens 


SKILL  AS  NATURAL  OR  ACQUIRED  7 

of  turns  of  phrase  simultaneously  bidding  for  his  choice, 
and  he  himself  knowing  what  he  wants  to  do  and  (within 
the  narrow  limit  of  a  man's  ability)  able  to  do  it." 

4.  There  is  abundant  other  evidence  to  the  long  discipline 
that  the  great  writers  have  given  themselves,  the  patient 
care  with  which  they  have  sought  for  the  just  word,  the 
happy  phrase,  the  telling  turn  of  a  sentence  or  a  clause. 
Newman's  prose  style  will  be  the  delight  of  readers  for 
generations,  but  all  his  life  he  is  reported  to  have  been 
compelled  to  spend  a  great  deal  of  time  upon  the  careful 
reshaping  of  everything  he  wrote.    Poe  is  read  and  enjoyed 
all  over  the  habitable  globe,  and  he  has  made  it  amply 
clear  to  us  that  all  that  he  did  was  the  work,  not  of  an 
uncontrolled  genius  yielding  to  the  rush  of  his  own  imagin- 
ings, but  of  a  conscious  intelligence  seeing  the  end  of  his 
work  from  the  beginning  and  ordering  the  details  toward 
that  end  with  a  finer  precision  than  that  of  a  carpenter  put- 
ting up  the  scaffolding  for  a  house. 

5.  "  It  is  not  difficult   to  construct  an   outline   of   the 
'  formula '  by  which  thousands  of  current  narratives  are 
being  wjiipped  into  shape."  * 

For  this  formula  Poe  is  in  some  measure  responsible, 
and  it  is  partly  to  the  existence  of  a  formula  that  we  must 
credit  the  enormous  body  of  good  literary  work  that  is  now 
being  done.  A  formula  is  valuable  for  everybody,  but  the 
man  of  original  powers  should  see  to  it  that  he  does  not 
reduce  his  work  to  the  level  of  the  rule  of  thumb  that  is 
employed  by  all  his  fellows.  A  formula  is  a  thing  to  be 
used,  but  he  who  uses  it  should  always  be  superior  to  it. 
He  should  use  it  and  not  be  used  by  it.  He  should  think 
of  it  as  an  instrumentality  by  which  he  may  bring  his  work 

1  Henry  Seidel  Canby  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  June,  1915. 


8  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

nearer  to  its  fully  effective  significance.  He  should  not  let 
it  shut  up  what  he  does  within  its  own  rigidity.  It  may 
be  very  important  to  stay  in  the  car  and  keep  on  the  rails 
from  Peoria  to  Chicago,  but  at  the  La  Salle  Street  Station 
it  is  even  more  important  to  get  out  of  the  car  and  find 
your  way  up  Michigan  Avenue  to  your  friend's  home.  If 
you  are  not  safe  to  go  alone  when  the  car  of  your  formula 
has  performed  its  proper  function  for  you,  perhaps  you 
should  not  try  to  travel  the  literary  pathway.  In  that  case, 
perhaps  you  ought  to  stay  in  Peoria,  but,  at  any  rate,  it  is 
worth  remembering  that,  without  any  formula,  from  Peoria 
to  Chicago  is  a  long  way  to  walk. 

Evidently  a  formula  is  generally  a  thing  of  imitation.  It 
was  through  imitation,  as  he  tells  us,  that  Stevenson 
achieved  command  of  his  resources.  Imitation  of  the  style 
of  any  one  writer  is  a  dangerous  thing.  Imitation  of  a 
number  of  writers  should  increase  flexibility  and  give  one 
power  over  a  fuller  medium  for  the  expression  of  thought. 
Imitation  of  a  single  writer  of  an  alien  temper  may  be 
cramping  to  the  point  of  destruction.  Imitation  of  the  same 
writer  as  a  part  of  a  general  exercise  in  the  imitation  of 
various  styles  should  make  that  writer's  capabilities  more 
nearly  a  possession  of  our  own.  By  so  much,  then,  we  have 
increased  our  working  capital.  We  have  not  made  ourselves 
the  slaves  of  any  one  formula  of  style,  but  have  found 
another  formula  for  application  at  need.  That  is  the  road 
to  freedom,  the  road  to  control  of  our  speech,  and  so  the 
road  to  control  over  the  minds  of  other  men. 

6.  In  all  writing  there  are  three  prime  things  that  must 
receive  attention,  subject-matter,  structure,  style.  Of  these, 
subject-matter  is  of  first  importance,  but  is  not  particularly 
a  matter  of  literary  training.  As  far  as  it  is  at  all  a  thing 
of  the  schools,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  we  learn 
to  think  when  we  are  studying  philosophy  or  physics.  If 


SKILL  AS  NATURAL  OR  ACQUIRED  9 

we  cannot  write  and  the  trouble  is  that  we  have  nothing 
to  say,  after  ourselves,  we  should  hold  our  professor  of 
social  science  as  much  responsible  as  our  professor  of  Eng- 
lish and  our  professor  of  chemistry  responsible  in  almost 
as  great  a  degree.  Only  our  professor  of  mathematics  can 
be  somewhat  excused  here,  because  his  science  is  a  science 
of  form,  but  for  that  reason  he  ought  to  be  held  somewhat 
substantially  accountable  for  our  sense  for  structure.  In 
fact,  ;almost  all  the  disciplines  to  which  we  have  submitted 
ourselves  must  bear  the  reproach,  if  we  cannot  put  our 
thoughts  in  order.  Thinking  truly  and  justly  is  thinking  in 
an  orderly  fashion.  Literary  training  should  go  beyond  that 
somewhat,  to  be  sure,  because  it  should  teach  us  to  adapt  our 
sort  of  orderliness  to  the  sort  that  we  may  assume  in  the 
minds  of  those  whom  we  address,  but  after  'all  there  is  not 
much  here  that  is  peculiarly  its  province.  The  would-be 
writer  must  be  a  scientist  and  a  historian  and  a  psychologist 
and  an  economist  and  the  master  of  some  other  kinds  of 
knowledge  not  in  the  curriculum,  if,  in  his  writing,  his 
thinking  is  to  show  that  clarity  of  structure  that  enables 
the  reader  to  think  it  after  him  with  pleasure. 

7.  It  is  in  the  third  of  these  things,  style,  that  we  shall 
find  the  especial  interest  of  literary  training  in  the  art  of 
writing.  How  to  put  the  thought  into  words  that  shall 
mean  what  we  want  them  to  mean  is  one  thing.  How  to 
put  it  into  words  that  carry,  that  give  it  the  proper  urge 
and  momentum,  that  make  it  alive  for  other  minds  as  it 
is  alive  for  our  own,  is  something  different  and  something 
not  by  any  means  so  easy.  It  requires  little  more  than  a 
knowledge  of  correct  grammatical  usage  to  put  a  plain  mat- 
ter of  fact  plainly  and  truthfully  to  the  understanding,  but 
a  Gettysburg  speech  is  not  composed  and  delivered  by  a 
man  insensible  to  the  varying  force  of  words  and  phrases. 
We  shall  not  all  write  even  so  much  as  a  Fourth-of-July 


io  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

thunder  of  rhodomontade.  There  are  for  all  of  us,  however, 
lesser  things  in  which  the  ability  to  express  our  thoughts 
justly,  with  force  and  fire,  with  due  restraint,  and  with  a 
sense  of  fitness  for  time  and  place  and  subject  will  be 
expected  of  us.  Then  it  will  add  to  our  confidence  and 
our  comfort  to  know  that  we  have  learned  something  of 
the  right  touch  from  the  methods  of  the  masters. 


II 

THE  QUALITIES  OF  STYLE 

8.  WE  are  much  more  conscious  of  qualities  of  style  in 
a  writer  than  we  are  of  the  specific  peculiarities  of  the 
phrasing    from    which    those    qualities    result.      Students 
attempting  to  analyze  a  paragraph  for  its  style  will  observe 
that  it  has  short  sentences  or  long  sentences,  perhaps,  without 
being  able  to  interpret  that  simple  fact  or  others  like  it  in 
higher  terms.    The  use  of  any  sentence  form,  short  or  long, 
balanced,  periodic  or  loose,  is  not  in  itself  a  quality  of  style. 
The  character  of  any  writing  will  certainly  be  affected  by 
the  length  of  the  sentences,  but  it  will  not  be  affected  in 
the  same  way  in  all  cases.     Suitable  as  these  variations  in 
effect  are,  they  are  not  matters  of  chance.    The  laws  gov- 
erning them  are  not  simple  or  obvious,  but  they  are  none 
the  less  laws,  and  as  laws  of  something  that  we  can  examine 
they  can  be  discovered  and  understood.     It  is  a  problem 
Somewhat  difficult  of  approach,  but  we  can  simplify  it  in 
a  aegree  by  making  some  primary. distinctions  that  will  help 
us  to  see  the   relation  between  the  effect  of  a  particular 
way  of  writing  and  the  details  of  that  method. 

9.  In  the  first  place,  one^broad  demarcation  between  dif- 
ferent styles  appears  in  the  distinction  between  the  per- 
sonal and  the  impersonal.    Writings  having  literary  quality 
must  be  written  in  a  style  that  is  more  or  less  personal.    On 
the  other  hand,  writings  of  a  scientific  character  may  be 
expected  to  be  comparatively  impersonal.    This  differentia- 
tion may  also  be  thought  of  as  a  differentiation  between 
the  emotional  and  the  coldly  intellectual,  between  the  literary 


12  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

and  the  literal,  between  the  colorful  and  the  colorless.  We 
will  use  the  terms  personal  and  impersonal,  keeping  it  in 
mind  that  they  are  relative  and  not  absolute  distinctions, 
and,  with  that  as  a  starting-point,  we  may  ask  ourselves: 
What  are  personal  qualities  in  style  ?  What  are  impersonal  ? 
What  are  both,  or  what  may  be  found  in  writings  of  both 
characters?  How  do  these  exhibit  themselves,  or  how  are 
they  achieved  as  matters  of  the  detailed  ordering  of  words  ? 
It  will  be  convenient,  perhaps,  to  put  these  things  in  a  table 
so  that  we  can  set  one  off  against  another  more  sharply. 

Impersonal  Personal 

Clarity  Strength 

Simplicity  Animation 

Precision  Energy 

Dignity 
Weight 
Emphasis 
Beauty 

Harmony 
Euphony 
Heightening 
through 
Imagery 

10.  The  foregoing  is  not  exhaustive.  It  is  meant  merely 
as  an  aid  in  starting  our  investigation  of  any  writer's  style 
and  of  the  means  by  which  its  qualities  have  been  attained. 
In  the  first  place,  it  will  appear  that  the  qualities  of  an  im- 
personal style  are  in  a  large  degree  foundation  qualities 
for  all  writing.  We  should  always  strive  to  write  clearly, 
and  we  should  also  strive  to  write  as  simply  as  is  consistent 
with  writing  precisely.  If  a  subject  is  difficult,  it  may  not 
be  possible  to  deal  with  it  in  a  simple  manner  and  yet  achieve 
accuracy.  In  the  degree  in  which  the  subject  and  our  inter- 
est in  it  permit,  however,  we  should  be  clear,  simple,  and 


THE  QUALITIES  OF  STYLE  13 

precise  in  everything  we  write.  Evidently,  then,  the  quali- 
ties that  make  a  writing  personal,  that  give  it  literary  char- 
acter, are  additions  to  the  simpler  qualities  whose  purpose 
does  not  go  beyond  that  of  establishing  understanding  of 
the  author's  meaning.  When  we  have  found  out  what  these 
additions  are  in  any  case  and  have  determined  whether  they 
have  or  have  not  affected  the  clarity,  the  simplicity,  and 
the  unified  precision  of  the  treatment,  we  shall  have  come 
to  an  understanding  of  the  writer's  style.  We  can  get 
at  the  question  best  by  taking  a  few  paragraphs  from  some 
bit  of  writing  having  a  pronounced  style,  seeing  what  its 
qualities  are,  and  attempting  to  discover  how  those  qualities 
have  their  source  in  the  choice  and  arrangement  of  words 
and  sentences.  Here  is  something  that  may  help  us  from 
"  The  Second  Coming  of  the  Ideal,"  an  essay  in  a  book  en- 
titled Sleeping  Beauty  and  Other  Prose  Fancies,  by  Rich- 
ard Le  Gallienne.1 

i.  "  One  Sunday  morning,  a  few  months  ago,  I  passed 
along  the  sumptuous  corridors  of  the  Waldorf-Astoria  Hotel, 
New  York,  on  my  way  to  the  writing  room,  and  I  came 
to  a  spacious  scarlet  hall,  set  about  with  plush  couches 
and  little  writing-desks.  2.  Exquisite  and  imperious 
women. sat  in  cozy  flirtation  with  respectful  young  Ameri- 
cans, and  there  was  a  happy  buzz  of  vanity  in  the  air. 

3.  Wealth,  luxury,  idleness,  were  all  about  me,  purring 
and  sunning  themselves  in  the  electric  light;  and  yet,  for 
some  unknown  and  doubtless   trivial   reason,   I   was   sad. 

4.  As  I  look  back  I  can  only  account  for  my  sadness  by 
the  fact  that  I  was  to  sit  answering  week-old  letters,  while 
these  happy  people  flirted.    5.  A  little  reason  is  always  the 
best   to   give   for  a   great   sadness — though,    indeed,   how 
could  one  help  being  sad  in  the  presence  of  so  much  marble 
and  so  many  millionaires? 

6.    "  Well,  at  all  events  I  was  sad ;  but  suddenly,  as  I 

1  Copyright,  1900,  by  John  Lane. 


14  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

looked  about  for  an  unoccupied  desk,  what  was  this  voice 
of  ancient  comfort  speaking  to  me  from  a  little  group, 
one  reader  and  two  listeners, — a  gray-haired,  rather  stern, 
old  man,  a  gray-haired  old  lady,  a  boy,  not  specially  intent,— 
rich  people,  you  would  say,  to  look  at  them :  '  Many  waters 
cannot  quench  love,  neither  can  the  floods  drown  it;  if  a 
man  would  give  all  the  substance  of  his  house  for  love,  it 
would  utterly  be  contemned.' 

7.  "  It  was  a  New  England  father  persisting  in  a  private 
morning  service  here  among  the  triflers. 

8.  "  I  felt  like  those  of  whom  one  has  read  in  Sunday- 
school  stories,  who,  passing  the  door  of  some  little  mission- 
house  one  rainy  night,  heard  a  word  or  a  hymn  that  seemed 
miraculously  intended  for  them.     9.    Surely  that  stern  old 
Puritan  father  had  been  led  to  read  that  particular  chap- 
ter, that  particular  Sunday  morning,  more  for  my  sake 
than,  at  all  events,  for  the  sake  of  his  little  boy,  who  might 
quite  reasonably  and  respectfully  have  complained  that  he 
was    too   young   as   yet   to    comprehend   writing   so    pro- 
foundly beautiful  and  suggestive  as  the  Hebrew  scriptures. 

10.  "  Yes !  it  was  evidently  for  the  poor  idealist  in  the 
House  of  Astor  that  the  message  was  intended,  u.  For 
the  boy  weariness,  for  the  mother  platitude,  for  the  father 
a  text — for  me  a  bird  singing;  and  all  day  long  I  kept 
saying  to  myself,  lonely  there  among  the  millionaires: 
'  Many  waters  shall  not  quench  love,  neither  shall  the  floods 
drown  it;  if  a  man  would  give  all  the  substance  of  his  house 
for  love,  it  would  utterly  be  contemned.' 

12.  "  If  a  wild  rose  had  suddenly  showered  its  petals 
down  from  the  ceiling,  or  a  spring  bubbled  up  through  the 
floor,  or  a  dove  passed  in  flight  through  the  hall,  the  effect 
of  contrast  could  hardly  have  been  more  unexpected  than 
the  surprising  sound  of  those  old  words  thus  spoken  at 
that  moment,  in  that  place.  13.  They  had  for  the  ear  the 
same  shock  of  incongruity,  of  willful  transportation  out  of 
one  world  into  another  quite  alien,  which  Cleopatra's 
Needle  has  for  the  eye  amid  the  hansoms  and  railway 
bridges  of  the  Thames'  embankment,  or  the  still  greater 
shock  of  juxtaposition  with  which  one  looks  upon  the 
Egyptian  obelisk  in  Central  Park. 


THE  QUALITIES  OF  STYLE  15 

14.  "  But  there  was  this  difference.  15.  The  obelisks 
tell  of  a  dead  greatness,  of  a  power  passed  away,  whereas 
those  words  told  of  an  ever-living  truth,  and  bore  witness, 
even  by  their  very  quotation  in  such  a  context,  to  a  power 
no  materialism  can  crush,  no  pessimism  stifle,  the  deathless 
idealism  of  the  human  spirit. 

16.  "  That  the  heart  of  man  can  still  go  on  dreaming 
after  all  these  centuries  of  pain  and  superficial  disillusion 
is  perhaps  the  greatest  proof  of  the  authenticity  of  the 
dreams.  17.  How  often,  indeed,  must^uch  (words,  such 
promises  of  the  poet  and  the  prophet,  (nave  rung  as  with 
a  hollow  mockery  in  the  ears  of  man;  in  the  downfall  of 
despairing  peoples,  with  all  their  unregarded  debris  of  indi- 
vidual hopes  and  dreams;  in  dark  ages  of  oppression,  iron 
epochs  of  militarism  in  which  the  very  flowers  might  well 
have  feared  to  blossom,  the  very  birds  to  sing;,  and  in  the 
ears  of  no  people  so  hopelessly  as  of  that  whose  poet  gave 
us  this  song  of  songs;  that  people  which,  as  if  in  ironical 
return  for  the  persecution  of  ages,  has  contributed  most 
to  the  idealism  of  mankind.  18.  Yet,  through  all,  the 
indomitable  dreams  arise,  and  the  indestructible  words 
promise  on  as  of  old.  19.  Though  the  dream  passes  into 
the  dust,  the  dust  rises  again  in  the  dream." 

n.  It  will  be  immediately  apparent  that  this  is  not  imper- 
sonal, that  it  has  been  written  with  feeling,  and  that  the 
author  has  known  how  to  communicate"Kis  feeling  as  well 
as  his  ideas.  Let  us  first  look  at  the  adjectives  running 
through  the  first  paragraph.  They  are :  sumptuous,  spa- 
cious, scarlet,  plush,  little,  exquisite,  imperious,  cozy,  respect- 
ful, young,  electric,  unknown,  doubtless,  trivial,  week-old, 
happy,  little,  great.  It  will  be  seen  that  they  are  almost 
all  words  conveying  a  sense  of  personal  valuation.  A 
thing  is  sumptuous,  not  wholly  in  the  fact  itself,  but  in  a 
large  measure  in  our  feeling  for  it.  The  same  can  be  said 
of  spacious.  It  is  a  relative  term,  and  scarlet  is  less  an 
absolute  term  than  red  would  have  been.  It  is  a  red 
of  the  most  vivid  sort,  the  sort  that  makes  the  liveliest 


16  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

impression  on  the  retina,  to  which  our  feelings  must  most 
respond.  Little  may  seem  to  express  a  mere  fact  of  size, 
but,  if  we  look  at  it  here,  we  shall  see  that  it  is  size  deter- 
mined by  the  writer's  feeling  for  the  desks  as  part  of  the 
luxurious  mode  of  life  to  which  they  are  but  casual  acces- 
sories. They  are  not  serious,  as  nothing  in  the  room  is 
serious,  and  so  they  are  little  in  the  scarlet  spaciousness, 
very  little,  doubtless,  beside  the  massive  solidity  of  plush 
couches. 

We  should  find  out  much  the  same  thing  about  the 
other  adjectives,  if  we  were  to  go  on  through  the  list. 
We  will  not  do  that,  but  will  observe  merely  that  these 
adjectives,  together  with  a  considerable  number  of  the 
nouns,  constitute  a  substantial  body  of  connotative  words, 
that  is,  words  that  have  some  fringe  of  associated  ideas, 
words  that,  as  they  are  used,  set  something  stirring  in  the 
mind.  This  contributes  to  the  strength  of  the  writing, 
gives  it  a  quality  not  quite  so  lively  as  animation,  not  so 
active  as  energy,  more  delicate  and  gentle  than  weight, 
but  still  clearly  a  quality  to  find  a  place  in  the  list  under 
strength.  Let  us  call  it  fervor — a  subdued  and  reflective 
fervor,  to  be  sure,  approaching  dignity — and  then  we  will 
turn  to  other  considerations. 

12.  The  mood  in  which  this  first  paragraph  is  conceived 
is  that  of  a  gently  tragic  irony,  the  futility  of  human  toy- 
ing with  life  set  off  by  the  splendor  and  richness  of  the 
material  circumstance  within  which  it  goes  forward.  This 
comes  to  its  focus  in  the  conclusion  of  the  fifth  sentence, 
and  it  is  interesting  to  observe  that  the  author  has  given 
this  further  point  in  the  sound  of  the  words,  the  explosive 
alliterative  m's  of  much,  marble,  many,  and  millionaires 
emphasizing  the  ground  for  sadness  in  an  unavailing  show 
of  wealth.  This  emphasis  is  seen  in  a  less  degree  in  the 
first  half  of  the  same  sentence,  a  little  reason  and  a  great 


THE  QUALITIES  OF  STYLE  17 

sadness.  Again  in  the  fourth  sentence  we  have  a  like 
antithesis  in  the  doubtful  satisfaction  of  answering  week-old 
letters  and  the  more  animated  pleasure  of  happy  people 
flirting.  In  the  third  sentence,  also,  wealth,  luxury,  and 
idleness  are  set  off  against  sadness,  and  as  a  matter  of  the 
sentence  management  that  is  the  running  order  of  the  para- 
graph. 

13.  Here,  then,  we  have  two  methods  of  securing  empha- 
sis, and  they  happen  to  exhibit  themselves  in  conjunction. 
The  antithetical  emphasis  just  noted  is  also  emphasis  by 
position.  In  the  second  sentence,  for  instance,  the  important 
phrases  are  at  the  beginning  and  at  the  end,  "  exquisite 
and  imperious  women,"  and  "  a  happy  buzz  of  vanity  in 
the  air."  The  third  sentence  also  gives  the  two  important 
positions  in  the  sentence  to  the  important  words,  "  wealth, 
idleness,  luxury,"  and  "  sad."  In  the  same  way,  the  im- 
portant place  in  the  paragraph  is  reserved  for  the  im- 
portant words,  as  we  have  seen,  and  yet,  calculated  as  all 
this  seems,  it  is  perfectly  easy,  natural,  and  convincing. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  second  paragraph,  the  tone  drops 
to  the  colloquial,  as  in  the  relaxation  of  sadness  itself, 
and  then  at  once  this  plainness  becomes  the  foil  for  the 
heightening  by  figure  and  image  of  the  beautiful  phrase, 
"  this  voice  of  ancient  comfort."  There  is  strength  in  the 
connotations  of  the  phrase  itself.  It  is  made  emphatic  by 
being  given  a  background  that  is  a  little  dull  and  gray. 
Then  the  author  heightens  that  effect  again  by  giving  us 
an  actually  gray  picture,  and  in  the  making  of  the  picture 
he  spreads  it  out  and  emphasizes  it  all  by  putting  the  details 
in  the  form  of  parallelism,  the  one  reader  and  the  two 
listeners,  the  old  man  and  the  old  lady,  the  boy  and  the 
gathering  together  again  as  rich  people.  He  does  not  stop 
with  this.  Perhaps  we  should  say  only  that  what  he  has 
done  is  in  method  as  well  as  in  substance  a  preparation  for 


18  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

the  words  from  the  Bible.  They  have  the  emphasis  of 
parallelism  also,  and  they  have  the  further  emphasis  of  a 
good  word-order  reaching  its  culmination  in  the  word  "  con- 
temned." They  have  strength  in  the  connotations  of  the 
words,  and  the  images  called  up  in  the  mind  are  images 
of  beauty. 

14.  Sentence  seven  makes  one  paragraph  for  emphasis, 
that  it  may  catch  and  hold  the  attention  a  little  longer, 
and  within   the   sentence   there   is   emphasis   again   in   the 
arrangement,  and  also  a  slight  antithesis,  "  New  England 
father "  immediately  after  the  opening  words,  which  are 
only  words  of  articulation,  and  "  triflers  "  at  the  end. 

The  fourth  paragraph  drops  a  little  from  the  fervor  that 
preceded.  It  is  sobered  by  the  grave  music  of  the  Song  of 
Solomon,  and  the  style,  therefore,  changes.  The  ninth  sen- 
tence is  not  so  long  as  the  sixth,  but  it  seems  longer,  be- 
cause it  is  not  arranged  with  as  much  rhythm  in  its  pauses, 
with  as  much  balance  and  certitude,  with  as  sharp  definition 
of  detail.  It  particularly  gives  the  sense  of  greater  sus- 
pense, and  it  is  suspense  that  adds  weight  and  emphasizes 
length. 

The  tenth  sentence  quickens  and  is  short  for  the  pur- 
pose of  giving  animation  to  that  quickening.  Then  again 
the  eleventh  sentence  is  like  the  sixth  in  the  mood  of  the 
subject-matter,  and  the  style  follows  that  tone.  We  have 
parallelism,  with  the  first  three  parallel  groups  set  off 
antithetically  against  the  fourth,  "  for  me  a  bird  singing." 
Again  there  is  the  antithetical  play  between  "  lonely  "  and 
"  millionaires,"  and  then  the  paragraph  comes  to  the  same 
climax  as  the  second. 

15.  We  will  pass  over  the  sixth  and  seventh  paragraphs. 
In  the  seventeenth  sentence  we  have  a  series  of  parallelisms 
more  complex  and  involved  than  in  preceding  paragraphs. 
This  greater  range  and  fullness  is  in  keeping  with  the 


THE  QUALITIES  OF  STYLE  19 

wider  sweep  of  the  thought.  It  is  a  long  sentence,  but 
its  organization  is  simplified  by  the  parallelism,  and  the 
parallel  units  are  kept  at  that  point  of  inner  variety  at 
which  the  intensity  natural  to  the  form  does  not  result 
in  narrowness.  Then  in  sentence  nineteen  we  come  to  the 
beautifully  antithetical  parallelism  of  the  conclusion,  the 
reversal  in  the  two  clauses  of  dream  to  dust  and  dust  to 
dream.  This  sentence  retains  the  method  and  manner  that 
have  characterized  the  writing  from  the  beginning  and  so 
give  it  a  unity  and  completeness  that  is  at  once  its  style 
and  the  fitting  form  of  its  art  method  and  its  moving  spirit. 
1 6.  Now  that  we  have  gone  through  the  selection,  per- 
haps we  should  tabulate  some  of  our  findings.  To  keep  our 
affairs  in  order,  we  will  refer  these  tabulations  to  the  little 
tabular  outline  already  made  out.  The  numbers  refer  to 
the  sentences  in  the  excerpt  from  Le  Gallienne. 

STRENGTH  resulting  from 
Connotative  Words,  1-5. 

The  large  number  of  such  words  in  this  para- 
graph should  be  noted  in  comparison  with  the 
number  in  paragraph  four. 

Nicely  Punctuated  Movement  of  Words,  Rhythm,  2, 
6,  7,  n,  17,  19. 

This  is  a  consequence  likely  to  be  more  or  less 
attendant  upon  parallelism.     It  may  be  insistence 
or  animation,  as  in  n  or  19,  or  it  may  be  weight, 
as  from  the  sense  of  mass  in  17. 
Unification  of  Sound,  as  in  the  m's  at  the  close  of  sen- 
tence five. 
EMPHASIS  resulting  from 

Placing  of  Words  in  important  positions,  2,  3,  5,  7, 

15,   19- 
Parallelism  heightening  the  sense  of 

Unity  and  Weight  of  a  single   impression,   3,  6, 

11,  12,  15. 

Variety  and  Fullness  in  things  related  by  a  common 
bond,  17. 


2O  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

Opposition  and  Irreconcilability  in  the  thought,  as  in 
the  antithesis  in  2,  3,  4,  5,  7,  15,  18. 

Sharpness  of  a  Single  Impression  through  antithetical 
contrast  with  something  else,  n,  19. 

Abruptness  or  a  Contrasting  Brevity,  7,  14. 
BEAUTY  resulting  from 

Euphony,  2,  5,  6,  n,  12,  18,  19. 

Imagery  and  Figure,  i,  2,  3,  5,  6,  10,  11,  12,  17,  19. 

Harmony. 

This  is  not  so  much  to  be  seen  in  the  individual 
items  as  in  the  relation  of  part  to  part.  All 
through  it  there  is  the  tone  of  a  subdued  splendor, 
the  futility  of  material  things  in  their  assuming  to 
be  sufficient  in  themselves,  and  hovering  over  them 
the  enduring  presence  of  things  that  are  not  ma- 
terial. At  first  it  is  the  ideal  only  as  a  vague  yearn- 
ing and  regret  in  the  presence  of  the  marble  and 
the  millionaires,  and  it  closes  with  the  ideal  made 
actual  and  triumphant  in  the  dust  and  the  dream. 
The  two,  however,  are  carried  along  together, 
and  the  phrasing  plays  one  off  against  the  other 
harmoniously  from  the  beginning  to  the  close. 

17.  There  is  one  sentence  concerning  which  little  has 
been  said,  the  eighth.  It  is  a  bit  confusing,  not  being  so 
well  ordered  as  the  writing  that  precedes  it.  That  is  partly 
because  of  the  uncertainty  with  regard  to  the  antecedent 
of  the  pronoun  who.  This  is  not  clear,  and  it  suggests 
an  important  law  of  style,  Herbert  Spencer's  principle  of 
the  economy  of  attention.  It  is  perhaps  best  to  quote  this 
in  his  own  words  from  his  Philosophy  of  Style. 

"  On  seeking  for  some  clew  to  the  law  underlying  these 
current  maxims,  we  may  see  shadowed  forth  in  many  of 
them,  the  importance  of  economizing  the  reader's  or  hearer's 
attention.  To  so  present  ideas  that  they  may  be  appre- 
hended with  the  least  possible  mental  effort,  is  the  desider- 
atum toward  which  most  of  the  rules  quoted  above  point. 
When  we  condemn  writing  that  is  wordy,  or  confused,  or 


THE  QUALITIES  OF  STYLE  21 

intricate — when  we  praise  this  style  as  easy,  and  blame  that 
as  fatiguing,  we  consciously  or  unconsciously  assume  this 
desideratum  as  our  standard  of  judgment.  Regarding  lan- 
guage as  an  apparatus  of  symbols  for  the  conveyance  of 
thought,  we  may  say  that,  as  in  a  mechanical  apparatus, 
the  more  simple  and  the  better  arranged  its  parts,  the 
greater  will  be  the  effect  produced.  In  either  case,  what- 
ever force  is  absorbed  by  the  machine  is  deducted  from 
the  result.  A  reader  or  listener  has  at  each  moment  but  a 
limited  amount  of  mental  power  available.  To  recognize 
and  interpret  the  symbols  presented  to  him,  requires  part 
of  this  power ;  to  arrange  and  combine  the  images  suggested 
requires  a  further  part;  and  only  that  part  which  remains 
can  be  used  for  realizing  the  thought  conveyed.  Hence, 
the  more  time  and  attention  it  takes  to  receive  and  under- 
stand each  sentence,  the  less  time  and  attention  can  be 
given  to  the  contained  idea;  and  the  less  vividly  will  that 
idea  be  conceived/' 

1 8.  It  is  worth  observing  that  parallelism  is  one  mode  of 
economy  of  attention.     It  is  easier  to  think  out  an  idea 
in  a  form  in  which  a  preceding  idea  has  just  passed  through 
the  mind  than  to  see  the  relations  of  words  in  a  new  order. 
From  that  point  of  view,  parallelism  is  in  a  degree  imper- 
sonal, but  it  is  personal  as  reiteration  and  insistence.    That 
which  is  insistent  kindles  attention,  and  the  kindling  of  atten- 
tion is  for  what  we  have  called  personal  writing  the  analogue 
of  economy  of  attention  in  impersonal  writing.     It  is  the 
kindling  of  attention,  the  warming  of  the  mind  to  a  glow, 
that  constitutes  the  power  of  such  writing  as  we  have  just 
been  considering. 

19.  "  To  make  therefore  our  beginning  that  which  to  both 
parts  is  most  acceptable,  we  agree  that  pure  and  unstained 
religion  ought  to  be  the  highest  of  all  cares  appertaining  to 
public  regiment:  as  well  in  regard  of  that  and  protection 
which  they  who  faithfully  serve  God  confess  they  receive 
at  his  merciful  hands ;  as  also  for  the  force  which  religion 


22  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

hath  to  qualify  all  sorts  of  men,  and  to  make  them  in  public 
affairs  the  more  serviceable,  governors  the  apter  to  rule 
with  conscience,  inferiors  for  conscience'  sake  the  willinger 
to  obey.  It  is  no  peculiar  conceit,  but  a  matter  of  sound 
consequence,  that  all  duties  are  by  so  much  the  better  per- 
formed, by  how  much  the  men  are  more  religious  from 
whose  abilities  the  same  proceed.  For  if  the  course 
of  politic  affairs  cannot  in  any  good  sort  go  forward  with- 
out fit  instruments,  and  that  which  fitteth  them  be  their 
virtues,  let  Polity  acknowledge  itself  indebted  to  Religion; 
godliness  being  the  chiefest  top  and  wellspring  of  all  true 
virtues,  even  as  God  is  of  all  good  things." 

This  paragraph  from  the  fifth  book  of  Bishop  Hooker's 
The  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity  is  as  obviously  imper- 
sonal as  what  we  have  just  read  from  Le  Gallienne  is  per- 
sonal. There  are  very  few  connotative  words.  The  sen- 
tence order  is  determined  strictly  by  grammatical  relations 
and  the  logic  of  the  thought.  There  is  no  heighten- 
ing by  imagery  or  figure,  no  movement  of  pleasurable 
sound.  There  is  no  pulse  or  rhythm  in  the  movement  of 
the  clauses.  One  little  touch  of  emphasis  there  is,  the 
parallelism  concluding  the  first  sentence,  but  that  is  all. 
Even  this  is  rather  addressed  argumentatively  to  the  rea- 
son than  to  the  feelings.  From  the  very  fact  that  it  does 
not  kindle  attention,  it  is,  in  comparison  with  what  we  have 
read  from  Le  Gallienne,  hard  reading.  It  is  a  style  of 
unusual  intellectual  definiteness  and  certitude,  the  style  of 
a  clear  and  cultivated  thinker,  but  it  does  not  take  hold. 


Ill 

SENTENCES    AND    THEIR    RELATIONS 

20.  THERE  are  a  number  of  ways  of  perceiving  any  single 
group  of  related  facts.  You  may  remember  having  tried 
to  count  the  number  of  persons  in  a  room.  If  so,  you  will 
remember  further  that  you  counted  them  by  fours,  fives, 
or  sixes,  trying  by  imaginary  lines  to  isolate  these  smaller 
groups  from  the  rest  not  yet  counted.  Then  you  went 
over  the  counting  again,  and  this  time  you  divided  the 
sixty  or  seventy  persons  in  the  room  up  into  groups  as 
before,  but  the  groups  were  not  the  same  and  the  imaginary 
lines  did  not  mark  them  off  in  the  same  way.  Some  one 
else  counting  the  company  after  you  would  have  a  still 
different  arrangement.  Some,  sort  of  arrangement  there 
must  be,  because  the  counting  cannot  be  done  comfortably 
by  taking  each  person  singly.  They  are  to  be  understood 
as  a  body,  and  the  process  of  thinking  them  from  their 
isolation  as  individuals  into  some  form  of  collective  unity 
is  a  process  of  simplification.  The  smaller  grouping  that 
permits  us  to  count  them  is  a  part  of  the  simplification 
from  variety  into  oneness. 

This  illustrates  in  an  elementary  way  what  is  a  funda- 
mental part  of  our  thinking.  Our  mental  activities  are  in- 
volved largely  in  the  establishment  of  relationships.  Just 
as  in  counting  we  try  to  find  something  that  will  enable 
us  to  tie  the  units  together  into  groups  of  five  or  six,  per- 
haps, so,  in  dealing  with  facts,  we  try  to  find  bonds  of 
some  kind  between  the  facts  by  which  we  hold  a  number 
of  them  in  the  mind  at  once  and  make  them  one.  No  two 

23 


24  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

persons  will  find  the  same  bonds  in  this  process.  Indeed, 
as  the  facts  increase  in  variety  and  complexity,  they  will 
be  able  to  do  so  correspondingly  less  than  in  counting. 
Individual  reactions  to  the  separate  facts  soon  color  the 
sense  of  relationship,  and  that  must  be  more  and  more 
largely  so  as  those  facts  become  more  and  more  humanly 
significant,  less  and  less  a  mere  matter  of  numbers.  The 
groupings  of  the  facts,  then,  and  the  threads  that  hold  the 
groups  together  must  be  a  new  thing  in  each  person  who 
surveys  them,  puts  them  together,  and  tries  to  see  what 
they  mean  in  the  mass. 

21.  In  any  piece  of  writing  the  writer's  feeling  for  rela- 
tionships that  he  discovers  between  the  units  of  the  ma- 
terial in  which  he  works  will  show  itself  in  the  way  in 
which  those  units  are  assembled  in  words.  In  this  sentence 
or  that,  perhaps,  the  thread  is  very  tenuous,  and  the  mark 
of  its  insubstantiality  is  a  semicolon.  Then  it  snaps  com- 
pletely, and  the  break  is  shown  by  a  period.  In  the  next 
sentence  it  sways  and  falters  with  commas  and  dashes, 
drawing  a  great  many  things  together  until  perhaps  you 
are  not  quite  sure  why  they  belong  in  one  group.  Never- 
theless, the  punctuation  declares  that  it  was  so  that  the 
author  thought  of  them,  and  understanding  the  author  is 
understanding  just  that,  the  way  he  feels  the  relationships 
with  which  he  is  dealing.  This  can  best  be  understood, 
of  course,  through  examination  of  some  writings  in  which 
this  tendency  to  organization  by  subordinate  groupings  ex- 
hibits a  distinctive  character. 

"  But  over  and  above  these  practical  rectitudes,  thus  de- 
termined by  natural  affection  or  self-love  or  fear,  he  may 
notice  that  there  is  a  remnant  of  right  conduct — what  he 
does,  still  more  what  he  abstains  from  doing — not  so  much 
through  his  own  free  election,  as  from  a  deference,  an 
'  assent/  entire,  habitual,  unconscious,  to  custom — to  the 


SENTENCES  AND  THEIR  RELATIONS  25 

actual  habit  or  fashion  of  others,  from  whom  he  would 
not  endure  to  break  away,  any  more  than  he  would  care 
to  be  out  of  agreement  with  them  in  questions  of  mere 
manner,  or,  say,  even  of  dress.  Yes!  there  were  the  evils, 
the  vices,  which  he  avoided  as,  essentially,  a  soil.  An 
assent,  such  as  this,  to  the  preferences  of  others  might  seem 
to  be  the  weakest  of  motives,  and  the  rectitude  it  could 
determine  the  least  considerable  element  in  moral  life. 
Yet  here,  according  to  Pronto,  was  in  truth  the  revealing 
example,  albeit  operating  upon  comparative  trifles,  of  the 
general  principle  required.  Thefe  was  one  great  idea 
(Pronto  proceeded  to  expound  the  idea  of  humanity— 
of  a  universal  commonwealth  of  minds — which  yet  some- 
how becomes  conscious,  and  as  if  incarnate,  in  a  select 
body  of  just  men  made  perfect)  in  association  with  which 
the  determination  to  conform  to  precedent  was  elevated 
into  the  weightiest,  the  fullest,  the  clearest  principle  under 
which  one  might  subsume  men's  most  strenuous  efforts 
after  righteousness." 

In  this  from  Marius  the  Epicurean,  by  Walter  Pater,  we 
shall  perceive  at  once  that  the  first  sentence  is  both  a 
long  sentence  and  a  loose  sentence.  It  is  so  long  and  so 
loose,  indeed,  that  the  meaning  is  a  bit  elusive.  In  some 
writers  that  would  be  a  fault,  because  it  would  be  the  mark 
of  a  failure  to  make  themselves  clear.  In  Pater  that  effect 
is  the  very  essence  of  his  thought.  The  mind  that  he  is 
putting  before  us  in  his  fiction  is  in  a  condition  of  uncer- 
tainty and  struggle,  seeing  various  implications,  various 
relations  and  associations  of  ideas,  in  what  he  is  presenting, 
trying  to  simplify  them  and  bring  them  to  order  by  a  kind 
of  eliminating  definition.  A  sentence  of  this  sort  is  the 
natural  expression  of  that  feeling.  The  next  sentence  is 
short  as  marking  a  decision  reached,  but  that  decision  is 
not  perfectly  straightforward  and  simple.  Evils  must  be 
interpreted  as  vices,  not  left  simply  as  evils,  just  as  in  the 
preceding  sentence  deference  needed  interpretation  by  a 


26  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

number  of  terms,  and  the  subordinate  declaration  in  the  rela- 
tive clause  must  be  qualified  by  a  phrase,  which  has  itself 
an  adverbial  modification.  Sentence  three  is  more  direct, 
although  longer  than  sentence  two,  taking  up  an  idea  just 
developed,  maintaining  touch  with  it  as  part  of  what  has 
gone  before  by  the  phrase  "  such  as  this,"  and  putting  for- 
ward a  kind  of  objection  to  the  idea,  a  qualification  like 
those  that  we  have  seen  in  the  preceding  sentence,  except 
that  here  it  is  given  the  dignity  of  greater  grammatical 
independence.  In  the  fourth  sentence  the  thought  turns 
back  again,  a  short  sentence  opening  with  definite  terms  of 
relation  with  what  precedes.  With  the  current  of  ideas  now 
turned  directly  forward  on  its  course,  the  fifth  sentence 
expands  the  thought  and  carries  it  on  in  a  growing  volume. 
22.  Now,  counting  up  the  words  in  the  paragraph,  we 
shall  find  that  the  sentences  have  an  average  length  of 
forty-seven  words.  That  is  nearly  double  the  average 
length  of  sentences  in  modern  prose.  There  are  two  rea- 
sons for  this  complicated  ordering  of  words,  this  enlarge- 
ment of  the  primary  grouping  in  sentences.  In  the  first 
place,  it  follows  that  feeling  for  the  indeterminate,,  the 
unsettled,  and  the  conflicting  which  is  part  of  Pater's  charm, 
the  mood  of  the  aesthetic  mystic  dwelling  forever  in  the 
light  of  distant  stars  that  break  dimly  through  an  earth 
haze.  The  wandering  length  of  the  first  sentence  main- 
tains this  tone.  It  wavers  from  phrase  to  phrase,  keep- 
ing to  the  theme,  but  confusing  the  eyes  with  different- 
colored  lights.  The  three  succeeding  sentences  become  more 
decisive,  but  they  do  not  sharply  change  the  tone,  and 
they  are  phrased  to  maintain  the  connection  with  the  first 
sentence  closely.  The  fifth  sentence  is  peculiar  in  that  the 
portion  of  it  within  the  parenthesis  is  in  the  vein  of  quali- 
fication seen  in  the  first  sentence,  while  the  rest  of  it  is 
in  the  way  of  amplifying  intensification  of  a  conclusion 


SENTENCES  AND  THEIR  RELATIONS  27 

now  definitely  reached.  Leaving  the  parenthetical  portion 
of  the  sentence  out,  we  may  see  that  it  illustrates  the 
principle  of  mass,  that  is,  its  length  serves  to  force  one 
thing  upon  the  mind  more  compellingly  simply  by  reason 
of  its  having  so  much  weight  of  words.  The  two  long 
sentences  of  the  paragraph,  then,  produce  directly  opposite 
effects  by  their  length,  the  first  one  piling  up  the  sense  of 
incertitude  even  by  the  terms  in  parallel  order,  because 
these  terms  are  employed,  not  in  the  way  of  emphatic 
reiteration,  but  in  the  opposed  fashion  of  a  carefully  ap- 
proximating definition  in  which  one  word  does  not  so  much 
reaffirm  the  preceding  as  take  its  place.  The  last  sentence, 
however,  comes  up  to  a  sort  of  climax  in  the  employment 
of  the  parallel  construction  in  the  cumulative  way,  one  term 
echoing  the  preceding  and  giving  it  weight. 

It  is  to  be  observed  here  finally  that  the  long  sentence, 
especially  when  a  loose  sentence  also,  as  is  the  first  sentence 
of  this  paragraph,  may  produce  the  effect  of  vagueness 
and  indecision,  perhaps,  at  times,  of  weakness.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  may  produce  the  effect  of  strength  by  its 
massing  of  a  body  of  like  details.  More  particularly  will 
this  latter  effect  result  when  the  sentence  is  also  periodic 
and  is  therefore  more  readily  adapted  to  a  climactic  arrange- 
ment. From  this  examination,  then,  we  may  say  that  long 
sentences  have  two  very  diverse  offices  and  must,  there- 
fore, have  some  intermediate  offices  also  as  they  change 
in  general  structure  from  the  loose  to  the  periodic,  from 
the  diffuse  to  the  cumulative,  from  the  heterogeneous  and 
amorphous  to  the  homogeneous  and  massive.  How,  now, 
do  short  sentences  function?  We  shall  have  to  look  after 
that. 

23.  "  But  what  good  have  the  Zeppelin  raids  done  ?  Thus 
far  their  only  purpose  seems  to  have  been  to  tease  Eng- 


28  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

land.  Now,  teasing  is  not  war;  it  is  preliminary  to  war. 
It  is  provoking;  it  maddens  the  adversary;  it  makes  him 
more  determined,  more  dangerous.  It  is  quite  legitimate 
to  drop  bombs  on  a  warship,  or  a  camp,  or  a  fortress,  but 
this  is  not  what  the  Zeppelins  are  doing.  They  drop  their 
bombs  miscellaneously  on  undefended  cities,  and  they  maim 
or  kill  here  and  there  a  dozen  men  and  women  and  chil- 
dren. This  does  not  help  the  war;  it  is  only  maddening. 
It  strengthens  the  enemy.  To  be  sure,  it  shows  that  Eng- 
land's ocean  wall  and  England's  supreme  navy  cannot 
screen  England's  coasts  against  an  occasional  biting  mos- 
quito; but,  again,  pestering  is  not  war.  Thus  far  Taubes 
and  other  scouting  airships  have  done  legitimate  military 
services,  but  Zeppelins  have  seemed  to  be  only  the  minis- 
ters of  spite  and  hate." — The  Independent,  August  30,  1915. 

It  is  quite  clear  at  once  that  in  this  there  is  no  nebulous 
mistiness  obscuring  the  writer's  idea,  as  in  what  has  been 
quoted  from  Pater.  Each  sentence,  each  clause,  is  sharply 
defined.  The  third  sentence  might  have  been  punctuated 
as  two.  The  fourth  might  have  been  punctuated  as  three. 
Their  relation  is  a  progressive  relation  throughout 
the  paragraph.  Each  sentence  is  a  step  in  a  decisive 
movement.  Qualifications  and  limitations  of  an  idea  are 
not  easily  attached  to  the  main  idea  in  a  short  sentence. 
Such  sentences  are  consequently  less  impeded.  They  carry 
the  thought  forward  more  fluently.  Here  they  give  the 
sense  of  unquestioning  certitude.  They  give  also  energy 
and  a  sort  of  rush  of  conviction  and  enthusiasm.  Two 
paragraphs  could  hardly  be  less  alike  than  this  and  the 
one  from  Pater,  and  it  is  not  without  meaning  that  the  sen- 
tences here  are  one-third  the  length  of  those  in  the  other 
paragraph.  A  different  and  quite  legitimate  punctuation 
would  reduce  them  to  an  average  of  one-fourth  that  length, 
or  about  one-half  the  average  length  of  sentences  in  mod- 
ern prose. 


SENTENCES  AND  THEIR  RELATIONS  29 

24.  It  is  only  when  a  periodic  sentence  is  long  that  we 
are  affected  by  or  conscious  of  its  periodic  character.  Be- 
cause a  periodic  sentence  is  one  in  which  the  meaning  is 
withheld  until  the  close,  its  chief  quality  or  character  or 
effect  is  that  of  suspense.  A  loose  sentence  goes  forward 
by  accretions  to  a  meaning  which  in  its  wording  and  form, 
that  is,  grammatically,  has  reached  a  definite  construc- 
tion before  the  close.  All  of  the  sentences  in  the  first  para- 
graph of  the  quotation  from  Le  Gallienne  in  chapter  two 
are  loose  sentences.  Each  one  of  them  might  close  and 
give  complete  sense  at  the  following  words,  in  their  order: 
Hotel,  Americans,  me,  letters,  sadness.  These  sentences 
are  all  loose  sentences  in  fact,  and  they  are  so  in  effect 
also  by  reason  of  their  length.  In  the  paragraph  from 
the  Independent  immediately  preceding,  the  short  sentences 
are  largely  periodic,  and  the  others  loose,  but  the  periodic 
sentences  do  not  have  the  effect  of  suspense  and  the  loose 
sentences  do  not  seem  indefinite,  because  none  of  the  sen- 
tences are  long.  In  fact  the  loose  sentences  here  are 
more  or  less  balanced  in  structure,  phrase  or  clause  set 
off  against  phrase  or  clause,  and  that  serves  to  sharpen 
rather  than  to  diffuse  or  dull  the  effect  of  each.  The  fol- 
lowing paragraph  from  Francis  Jeffrey's  essay  on  Walter 
Scott,  Edinburgh  Review,  August,  1810,  illustrates  the  sus- 
pense that  comes  from  the  periodic  structure  when  the  sen- 
tences are  of  some  length. 

i.  "  Such  seem  to  be  the  most  general  and  immediate 
causes  of  the  apparent  paradox,  of  reckoning  that  which 
pleases  the  greatest  number  as  inferior  to  that  which 
pleases  the  few;  and  such  the  leading  grounds  for  fixing 
the  standard  of  excellence,  in  a  question  of  mere  feeling 
and  gratification,  by  a  different  rule  than  that  of  the  quan- 
tity of  gratification  produced.  2.  With  regard  to  some  of 
the  fine  arts — for  the  distinction  between  popular  and  actual 


30  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

merit  obtains  in  them  all — there  are  no  other  reasons,  per- 
haps, to  be  assigned ;  and,  in  Music,  for  example,  when  we 
have  said  that  it  is  the  authority  of  those  who  are  best  quali- 
fied by  nature  and  study,  and  the  difficulty  and  rarity  of 
the  attainment,  that  entitles  certain  exquisite  performances 
to  rank  higher  than  others  that  give  far  more  general  de- 
light, we  have  probably  said  all  that  can  be  said  in  explana- 
tion of  this  mode  of  speaking  and  judging.  3.  In  poetry, 
however,  and  in  some  other  departments,  this  familiar, 
though  somewhat  extraordinary  rule  of  estimation,  is  justi- 
fied by  other  considerations." 

The  first  sentence  is  obviously  not  periodic  as  a  whole, 
but  the  two  clauses  of  which  it  is  composed  are  both  long 
and  both  periodic.  The  portion  of  the  second  sentence  fol- 
lowing the  semicolon  is  exceptionally  long  and  is  periodic. 
The  third  sentence  is  wholly  periodic.  A  reading  of  the 
paragraph  will  probably  produce  in  most  minds  a  sense 
of  dragging  weight.  An  express  train  stopping  at  small 
towns  before  reaching  the  terminal  in  the  city  is  largely 
engaged  in  taking  on  luggage  without  throwing  any  off.  It 
requires  continually  more  driving  energy  the  nearer  it 
comes  to  the  end.  It  is  so  with  the  mind  when  it  is  taking 
up  the  contents  of  a  periodic  sentence.  Every  word  must 
be  carried  along  to  the  close,  and  both  its  meaning  and 
its  relationships  must  be  carried  along  together.  If  the 
interest  is  climactically  kindled  toward  the  close,  the 
sense  of  weight  in  the  periodic  form  may  give  energy 
to  the  sentence.  Otherwise  that  form  may  tend  to 
weakness  through  the  burden  it  puts  upon  the  reader, 
who  must  hold  too  much  in  his  mind  at  once  before  com- 
ing to  understanding.  In  its  degree,  weakness  is  the 
effect  of  the  periodic  structure  in  the  paragraph  just  con- 
sidered. 

25.  What  in  America  is  perhaps  the  best-known  piece 
of  prose  outside  the  Bible,  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  speech, 


SENTENCES  AND  THEIR  RELATIONS  31 

has  come  to  that  distinction  very  largely  because  it  is  a 
triumph  of  style  and  structure. 

"  Fourscore  and  seven  years  ago,  our  fathers  brought 
forth  on  this  continent  a  new  nation,  conceived  in  liberty, 
and  dedicated  to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are  created 
equal.  Now  we  are  engaged  in  a  great  civil  war,  testing 
whether  that  nation  so  conceived  and  so  dedicated,  can 
long  endure.  We  are  met  on  a  great  battlefield  of  that 
war.  We  have  come  to  dedicate  a  portion  of  that  battle- 
field as  a  final  resting-place  for  those  who  here  gave  their 
lives  that  that  nation  might  live.  It  is  altogether  fitting 
and  proper  that  we  should  do  this.  But  in  a  larger  sense 
we  cannot  dedicate,  we  cannot  consecrate,  we  cannot  hallow 
this  ground.  The  brave  men,  living  and  dead,  who  struggled 
here,  have  consecrated  it  far  above  our  poor  power  to  add 
or  detract.  The  world  will  little  note,  nor  long  remem- 
ber, what  we  say  here,  but  it  can  never  forget  what  they 
did  here.  It  is  for  us,  the  living,  rather  to  be  dedicated 
here  to  the  unfinished  work  which  they  who  fought  have 
thus  far  so  nobly  advanced.  It  is  rather  for  us  to  be  here 
dedicated  to  the  great  task  remaining  before  us, — that  from 
these  honored  dead  we  take  increased  devotion  to  that  cause 
for  which  they  gave  the  last  full  measure  of  devotion, — 
that  we  here  highly  resolve  that  these  dead  shall  not  have 
died  in  vain, — that  this  nation,  under  God,  shall  have  a 
new  birth  of  freedom, — and  that  government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people,  for  the  people,  shall  not  perish  from  the 
earth." 

26.  The  last  clause  of  this  address,  "  that  government 
of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people,  shall  not  perish 
from  the  earth/'  is  probably  more  widely  known  and  more 
widely  quoted  than  any  other  thing  ever  written  by  an 
American.  For  this  currency,  the  subject-matter  is  not  so 
much  responsible  as  the  form.  An  editorial  in  the  New 
York  Times  for  September  iQth,  1915,  makes  note  of  the 
fact  that  the  ideas  in  this  sentence  had  been  given  a  some- 


32  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

what  similar  expression  before  by  each  of  three  well- 
known  men,  Robespierre,  Webster,  and  Theodore  Parker. 
In  each  case  the  parallelism  is  not  so  firm  and  sharp  and 
clear  as  it  is  in  the  form  given  it  by  Lincoln.  He  has 
reduced  each  phrase  to  a  minimum  and  given  them  that 
close  likeness  of  form  that,  by  establishing  a  rhythmic  roll 
which  is  not  artificial  but  the  real  pulse  of  the  thought, 
plays  upon  our  emotions,  merely  by  its  movement,  a  sort 
of  drum-beat  of  ideas.  Something  of  the  same  method 
and  quality  runs  through  the  whole  speech.  The  second 
sentence  and  the  third  and  the  fourth  begin  in  a  like 
fashion.  The  clauses  of  the  sixth  sentence  are  parallel 
likewise,  and  the  eighth  sentence  is  a  balanced  sentence 
with  a  striking  and  memorable  antithesis.  The  last  sentence, 
again,  is  a  long  sweep  of  parallel  clauses,  heightened  in 
their  cumulative  effect,  as  we  have  seen,  by  parallel  phrases 
within  the  last  clause. 

Part  of  the  greatness  of  this  brief  speech,  a  speech  care- 
fully prepared  before  it  was  delivered,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered, comes  from  the  moderation  of  its  statements  taken 
in  connection  with  the  wonderful  effectiveness  of  its  form. 
Here  are  true  things,  enduring  things,  voiced  without 
undue  passion,  and  yet  voiced  as  strongly  as  a  man  may 
voice  things  in  measured  human  speech.  The  whole  is 
dignified  and  even  reserved,  because  it  does  not  go  beyond 
the  truth.  It  is  powerful,  because  that  truth  is  given  a 
compelling  form.  It  has  the  strength  and  moderation  of 
a  great  occasion,  and  that  balance  exhibits  itself  in  the 
incidental  circumstance  that  the  length  of  the  sentences  is 
approximately  that  of  the  average  in  modern  prose,  be- 
ing a  little  more  than  half  that  in  the  paragraph  from 
Pater  and  almost  twice  that  in  the  editorial  from  the 
Independent. 

27.    There  is  one  other  thing  in  this  matter  of  sentences 


SENTENCES  AND  THEIR  RELATIONS  33 

and  their  arrangement  in  paragraphs  that  is  of  some  im- 
portance. How  are  they  held  together?  The  rhetorics 
abundantly  declare  that  a  paragraph  should  be  coherent, 
but  is  coherence  one  thing  or  several,  one  form  and  order 
of  words  or  a  number  having  varying  effects  in  keeping 
with  varying  ways  of  seizing  the  attention  and  holding  it 
to  the  subject?  Looking  back  at  the  paragraph  from  Pater, 
we  shall  see  that  the  second  sentence  makes  connection 
with  the  preceding  in  the  first  two  words,  the  third  with 
the  second  in  words  three  to  five,  the  fourth  with  the 
third  in  the  first  two  words,  and  the  fifth  with  the  fourth 
in  the  words  "  one  great  idea/*  which  are  related  in  thought 
to  "  the  great  principle  "  at  the  close  of  the  fourth  sen- 
tence. By  this  establishment  of  connection  from  sentence 
to  sentence  the  paragraph  moves  along  gently.  You  feel 
the  ease  of  the  transitions  as  thought  slips  lullingly  into 
thought.  In  the  following  from  William  Marion  Reedy's 
"Reflections"  in  the  Mirror  for  August  27th,  1915,  there 
is  a  much  more  abrupt  form  of  sentence  connection. 

;<  The  famous  Forty  Thieves  had  nothing  on  the  offi- 
cers and  some  of  the  directors  of  the  Rock  Island  Rail- 
road. They  seem  to  have  grabbed  a  bunch  of  loot  at  every 
locomotive  '  toot '  on  all  the  lines.  Inefficient  public  owner- 
ship in  days  to  be  will  be  unable  to  beat  this  kind  of  private 
ownership  in  the  days  that  were.  And  the  work  of  the 
Rock  Island  crooks  injured  not  that  road  alone.  It  rises 
up  to  form  the  basis  of  a  refusal  of  rate  increase  to  hon- 
estly-managed railroads.  One  wonders  if  it  will  be  quite 
safe  to  admit  such  men  to  the  benefits  of  the  honor  system 
in  one  of  the  humane  penitentiaries  in  which  they  should 
be  incarcerated.  Rock  Island  is  worse  than  was  Erie 
under  Gould  and  Fisk,  and  without  a  Josie  Mansfield  in 
the  background  to  give  it  the  touch  of  picaresque  romance." 

The  unity  of  the  paragraph  is  not  sacrified  here,  but  the 
sentences  are  more  independent,  they  make  more  positive 


34  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

separate  impressions,  and  the  general  tone  of  the  paragraph 
is  therefore  less  equable.  Probably  this  way  of  bringing 
sentences  together,  as  it  has  a  livelier  sense  of  action  and 
animation,  is  more  stimulant  to  the  reader  and  more  likely 
to  sharpen  his  attention.  Further,  this  less  formal  mode 
of  sentence  connection  is  more  in  agreement  with  that  of 
ordinary  speech.  It  is  more  natural  and  simple,  and  sim- 
plicity and  naturalness  are  important  things  in  good  writing. 


IV 

WORDS,  THEIR  ASSOCIATIONS  AND  CONNO- 
TATIONS 

28.  WHEN  your  friend  is  talking  to  you  it  is  not  alto- 
gether what  he  says,  but  the  light  in  his  eyes,  the  turn  of 
his  head,  the  toss  of  his  hand  that  give  his  words  life 
and  make  you  understand.  Should  the  subject  of  discus- 
sion happen  to  be  a  mathematical  demonstration  or  a  mat- 
ter-of-fact problem  in  physics,  it  is  more  than  likely  that 
there  will  be  very  little  light  in  the  eyes  and  very  little 
of  anything  else  to  illuminate  the  bare  movement  of  the 
thought.  Something  of  the  same  effect  comes  to  us  also 
from  the  printed  page.  The  smile  and  the  gesture  of  the 
speaker  are  the  marks  of  the  play  of  personality  about  the 
subject,  but,  as  we  have  seen  before,  some  subjects  are 
almost  entirely  impersonal.  The  written  word  cannot  have 
these  same  marks  of  personality,  of  individual  feeling,  can- 
not so  evidently  show  or  fail  to  show  the  kindling  eye,  but 
it  has  some  distinguishing  marks  in  that  kind  of  its 
own. 

Words  and  phrases  in  themselves  have  a  character.  Some 
of  them  carry,  not  meaning  alone,  but  a  body  of  experi- 
ences. There  is  warmth  in  those  experiences,  and  color  and 
life,  and  the  reader  cannot  be  unmindful  of  it.  They 
have  been  used  in  connection  with  things,  with  activities, 
with  passions  to  which  we  have  been  and  must  again  be 
responsive.  It  is  a  simple  matter  to  speak  of  green  pas- 
tures, but  who  that  has  ever  listened  to  the  reading  of  the 

35 


36  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

Twenty-third  Psalm  will  hear  the  phrase  and  accept  it  as 
no  more  than  a  reporting  of  something  that  has  been  or 
is?  A  line  in  Milton  has  made  Vallombrosa  a  name  to 
stir  the  imagination.  Mesopotamia  is  not  simply  a  place 
or  a  country.  It  is  romance  and  beauty  and  earth  memory. 
Where  in  the  civilized  world  to-day  is  there  a  man  who 
can  read  the  word  kaiser  or  king  or  czar  without  a  quiver 
of  execration  or  loyalty  or  some  other  of  the  many  feelings 
that  have  set  men  at  variance  since  the  last  of  July, 
nineteen  hundred  and  fourteen?  An  emperor  is,  by  the  dic- 
tionary, merely  the  ruler  of  an  empire,  but  while  the  loyal 
subjects  of  an  emperor  may  see  him  as  a  symbol  of  power, 
of  national  ideals,  and  of  national  security,  to  many  a 
lover  of  freedom  he  is  the  embodiment  of  more  sin  and 
misery  than  should  ever  be  realized  in  human  form. 
These  associated  ideas  and  sentiments  that  accompany  the 
primary  meanings  of  some  words,  their  connotations,  as 
they  are  called,  are  so  various  and  so  elusive,  so  depend- 
ent upon  the  particular  reader's  acquaintance  with  a  word's 
literary  and  human  fellowships,  that  they  may  easily  be- 
tray a  writer.  If  the  end  of  any  writing  is  scientific 
precision,  the  use  of  words  that  are  practically  without 
connotation  is  the  safer.  A  man  who  is  demonstrating 
that  the  square  of  the  hypotenuse  of  a  right-angled  triangle 
is  equal  to  the  sum  of  the  squares  on  the  other  two  sides 
must  use  terms  that  do  not  fluctuate.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  he  were  trying  to  convey  an  impression  of  the  magnitude 
of  Niagara,  he  would  not  do  that  successfully  by  report- 
ing, however  accurately,  the  number  of  gallons  of  water 
that  go  over  the  falls  every  minute. 

29.  We  must  look  at  a  few  words  a  little  more  closely, 
see  what  their  connotations  are,  and  learn  how  writers 
use  them  so  as  to  flash  to  the  reader's  mind  something 
more  than  the  cold  idea.  The  paragraph  below  is  taken 


WORDS,  THEIR  ASSOCIATIONS  AND  CONNOTATIONS     37 

from  a  powerful  novel  by  Frank  Norris,  Vandover  and  the 
Brute*  a  novel  of  college  life,  well  worth  reading  by  col- 
lege students. 

"  He  took  a  few  turns  on  the  upper  deck,  smoking  his 
pipe,  walking  about  fast,  while  his  dinner  digested.  The 
sun  went  down  behind  the  horizon  in  an  immense  blood- 
red  nebula  of  mist,  the  sea  turned  from  gray  to  dull  green 
and  then  to  a  lifeless  brown,  and  the  Santa  Rosa's  lights 
began  to  glow  at  her  quarters  and  at  her  masthead;  in 
her  stern  the  screw  drummed  and  threshed  monotonously, 
a  puff  of  warm  air  reeking  with  the  smell  of  hot  oil  came 
from  the  engine  hatch,  and  in  an  instant  Vandover  saw 
again  the  curved  roof  of  the  immense  iron-vaulted  depot, 
the  passengers  on  the  platform  staring  curiously  at  the 
group  around  the  invalid's  chair,  the  repair  gang  in  spot- 
ted blue  overalls,  and  the  huge  white  cat  dozing  on  an 
empty  baggage  truck." 

Making  up  from  this  paragraph  a  list  of  words  and 
phrases  that  we  can  safely  say  are  more  than  ideational, 
we  shall  have  the  following:  smoking,  pipe,  black  horizon, 
immense,  blood-red,  nebula  of  mist,  sea,  gray,  dull  green, 
lifeless  brown,  lights,  glow,  quarters,  masthead,  drummed, 
threshed,  puff,  warm  air,  reeking,  smell,  hot  oil,  staring, 
gang,  dozing.  This  list  is  not  exhaustive,  and  we  shall 
pause  to  look  at  the  connotative  elements  in  only  a  few 
of  the  words  in  the  list.  "  Immense,"  to  begin  a  little 
way  down  the  list,  may  seem  at  first  sight  a  word  express- 
ive of  size  only,  but  if  you  measure  its  play  upon  the 
mind  a  little  more  carefully  you  will  see  that  this  is  not 
absolute  size,  but  size  in  its  effect  upon  the  feelings  and 
the  imagination.  A  "  nebula  of  mist "  is  not  a  fact,  not 
a  certainty,  but  a  mystery.  It  sets  the  mind  groping  into 
the  unknown.  Here  it  is  only  a  screen  of  clouds  in  front 
1  By  permission  of  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co. 


38  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

of  the  setting  sun,  but  it  carries  the  mind  out  into  the 
infinities  of  distance  where  the  great  lights  of  the  firmament 
are  caught  in  the  net  of  the  Milky  Way. 

How  powerfully  a  "  puff  of  warm  air  reeking "  takes 
hold  upon  the  senses!  It  is  heat  touching  the  face  and 
the  movement  of  air  across  the  cheek  and  the  smell  of 
something  not  pleasant  in  the  nostrils.  All  this  goes  beyond 
the  simple  recorded  fact,  because  it  does  rouse  the  senses, 
being  in  that  very  circumstance  more  than  ideational.  Ex- 
amination of  the  other  words  in  the  list  would  in  the  same 
way  discover  connotative  values  of  one  sort  and  another 
in  them  all.  They  touch  in  various  ways  some  of  the 
things  that  we  have  lived  and  felt.  They  are  not  abstrac- 
tions. They  do  not  simply  define  for  us  or  put  before 
us  forms  of  thought.  There  are  words  that  do  no  more 
than  that,  words  that  shut  thought  up  within  their  nar- 
row compass,  that  offer  to  the  imagination  no  by-paths 
into  the  forest,  no  broad  highways  into  the  peopled  world. 
A  paragraph  written  in  such  language  is  very  different 
from  this  paragraph.  Here  is  one  from  an  editorial  en- 
titled "  Our  Task  in  Mexico  "  in  The  World's  Work  for 
October,  1915,  a  paragraph  that  is  written  in  the  live  fashion 
of  our  present  day,  but  that  is  yet  not  alive  to  the  same 
literary  end  and  with  the  same  literary  quality  as  that 
that  we  have  just  read. 

"  The  military  forces  which  are  operating  in  Mexico  at 
present  are  not  very  formidable  bodies.  They  are  not 
nearly  as  formidable  as  they  were  earlier  in  the  revolu- 
tion. Their  equipment  and  personnel  have  been  wasted. 
The  public  support  of  the  various  factions  has  dwindled 
and  arms  have  been  increasingly  scarce  during  the  last  year. 
If  the  worst  solution  is  forced  on  us  we  shall  have  to  use 
our  military  forces.  Their  task  would  be  to  take  and  hold 
the  principal  railroad  lines  in  the  Republic.  Without  these 


WORDS,  THEIR  ASSOCIATIONS  AND  CONNOTATIONS     39 

no  organized  resistance  is  possible,  for  rivers  and  roads  are 
of  little  use  in  Mexico.  The  chief  struggles  of  the  revolu- 
tionists have  been  for  the  railroads,  and  Villa  particularly 
has  based  his  military  operations  on  the  rail  lines." 


30.  A  partial  list  of  the  words  here  will  be  useful  for 
comparison.  The  following  are  some  of  them:  military, 
forces,  operating,  formidable,  bodies,  revolution,  equipment, 
personnel,  public,  support,  factions,  dwindled.  Our  lan- 
guage is  almost  without  absolute  synonyms,  but  if  we  ask 
ourselves  what  is  the  difference  between  being  military 
and  being  warlike,  to  use  an  approximately  synonymous 
term,  we  shall  see  that  the  first  word  has  to  do  with  the 
machinery  of  war,  not  with  its  passions  or  its  human  activi- 
ties as  such.  It  expresses  its  meaning  fully,  and  there  is 
no  fringe  of  associations  and  experiences  that  it  carries 
along  with  it  outside  of  that  meaning.  The  word  does 
not  hint  at  the  struggle  and  will  of  personal  combat,  but 
its  synonym  does.  In  absolute  meaning  the  word  warlike 
may  be  narrower,  but  that  meaning  runs  out  into  the  love  of 
country,  into  the  march  of  the  company  and  the  regiment, 
men  of  the  same  blood  and  the  same  home  ties  shoulder 
to  shoulder,  into  the  rattle  of  musketry  and  the  clash 
of  swords  and  the  rush  of  horsemen  breaking  through  the 
lines  and  filling  the  air  with  dust  where  the  cries  and 
the  groans  of  men  rise  and  are  smothered  back  into  the 
last  silence. 

Looking  through  the  rest  of  these  we  shall  see  that 
they  are  all  words  without  any  of  this  glamour  of  human 
experiences  enfolding  them.  They  have  the  clear  glow  of 
electric  lights  when  the  night  is  cloudless  and  the  air  is 
pure.  They  have  none  of  the  enchantment  of  torches  in 
the  mist.  For  such  writing  as  this,  which  is  meant  to  be 
an  accurate  statement  of  things  as  they  are,  words  with 


4O  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

little,  if  any,  connotation  are  needed.  It  is  important  that 
there  shall  come  no  confusion  through  varying  understand- 
ing of  terms.  They  must  be  sharp  and  unmistakable,  but 
in  writing  of  another  sort  it  may  be  that  fullness,  richness, 
imaginative  expansion  of  the  thought  will  be  more  im- 
portant than  certitude.  Then  there  will  be  demanded  a 
more  exuberant  diction,  words  that  have  been  born,  not 
in  the  study,  but  on  the  street  and  in  the  fields  and  in  the 
shops  and  in  the  talk  of  friends  about  the  hearth,  words 
that  keep  the  flavor  of  their  origin  and  are  sweet  on  the 
tongue. 

31.  In  this  consideration  of  words  there  has  been  no  ac- 
count taken  of  their  various  ways  of  functioning  in  the 
sentence.  That  is  primarily  a  matter  for  the  grammarian, 
but  there  is  one  distinction  between  words  as  organically 
related  to  other  words  that  has  some  significance  as  affect- 
ing style.  That  distinction  is  one  between  words  that  bring 
concepts  to  the  mind  and  others  that  merely  serve  to  articu- 
late the  sentence,  to  bind  its  parts  together.  Prepositions 
and  conjunctions  are  obviously  articulating  words.  Verbs 
are  sometimes  no  more  than  that,  and  in  particular 
we  shall  find  that  true  of  the  verb  "  to  be."  Too  many 
articulating  words  obviously  weaken  a  sentence,  and  they 
also  weaken  it  if  placed  in  important  positions,  as  at  the 
beginning  or  the  end.  In  almost  any  writing  there  should 
be  no  more  of  them  than  are  necessary.  Often  a  sentence 
may  be  strengthened  by  the  substitution  of  a  verb  that 
has  meaning  and  connotation  in  itself  for  one  that  is  articu- 
lating merely.  "  He  hurried  to  me,"  for  instance,  is  bet- 
ter than,  "  He  came  to  me  quickly." 

It  is  in  poetry  that  faulty  use  and  placing  of  articulating 
words  displays  itself  most  conspicuously.  The  following 
lines  are  taken  disconnectedly  from  Dryden's  "  Annus  Mira- 
bilis  " : 


WORDS,  THEIR  ASSOCIATIONS  AND  CONNOTATIONS     41 

"  Such  deep  designs  of  empire  does  he  lay 

O'er  them  whose  cause  he  seems  to  take  in  hand; 
And  prudently  would  make  them  lords  at  sea, 
To  whom  with  ease  he  can  give  laws  by  land." 

5   "  Each  other's  poise  and  counterbalance  are." 
"  It  would  in  richer  showers  descend  again." 
"  For  tapers  made  two  glaring  comets  rise." 
"  He  first  was  killed  who  first  to  battle  went." 

"  Their  way-laid  wealth  to  Norway's  coast  they  bring  ; 
10    There  first  the  North's  cold  bosom  spices  bore." 

The  first  line  ends  in  an  articulating  word,  and,  indeed, 
the  last  three  words  of  the  line  are  either  articulating 
words  or  words  of  reference.  That  is,  they  are  words 
that  do  no  more  than  show  the  relationships  of  "  deep 
designs  of  empire."  The  second  line  is  weak  in  contain- 
ing no  word  having  more  than  the  slightest  connotation, 
and  the  fourth  is  in  about  the  same  case.  The  fifth  ends 
weakly  in  an  articulating  word,  and  the  verb  of  the  sixth 
is  articulating,  since  showers  always  descend  and  we  have  1 
that  much  in  our  minds  as  soon  as  we  think  of  them  at/ 
all.  In  the  seventh  sentence,  the  final  word  is  again  articu-  i 
lating,  having  no  use  beyond  that  of  completing  a  predica- 
tion grammatically  without  contributing  to  the  thought. 
The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  remaining  three  lines.  ^ 
It  needs  only  a  glance  over  these  lines  for  realization  of 
their  weakness  and  futility,  and  that  futility  is  consequent 
upon  both  the  excess  of  articulating  words  and  the  faulty 
arrangement  by  which  they  have  been  made  prominent. 
That  will  be  more  apparent  by  comparison  with  the  fol- 
lowing lines  from  "  Lepanto,"  one  of  a  number  of  remark- 
able poems  in  a  volume  by  Gilbert  K.  Chesterton,  recently 
published  by  the  John  Lane  Company. 

^  «3f     C,-^1     -^X 


42  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

"  They  rush  in  red  and  purple  from  the  red  clouds  of  the  morn, 
From  temples  where  the  yellow  gods  shut  up  their  eyes  in  scorn; 
They  rise  in  green  robes  roaring  from  the  green  hells  of  the  sea 
Where  fallen  skies  and  evil  hues  and  eyeless  creatures  be  ; 
On  them  the  sea-valves  cluster  and  the  <7r<ry  sea-forests  curl, 
Splashed  with  a  splendid  sickness,  the  sickness  of  the  pearl; 
They  .ra;<?//  in  sapphire  smoke  out  of  the  &/«?  cracks  of  the  ground, — 
They  gather  and  they  wonder  and  give  worship  to  Mahound." 

Here  there  is  only  one  word  against  which  serious  objec- 
tion could  be  raised  as  being  conspicuous  beyond  its  natural 
function  or  as  unduly  weakening  the  writing,  the  little  word 
"  be  "  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  line.  The  number  of  words 
embodying  concepts  is  very  high,  and  the  lines  are  conse- 
quently strong  and  compelling.  The  words  that  give  it 
vitality  have  been  printed  in  italics  in  order  that  their 
comparative  predominance  may  be  the  more  easily  realized. 

32.  Whimsicality  and  humor  are  no  doubt  in  large 
measure  a  thing  of  the  subject-matter  of  any  writing,  but 
in  part,  at  least,  they  result  from  modes  of  phrasing.  Evi- 
dent over-statement  or  under-statement  are  often  employed 
to  give  the  sense  of  incongruity  upon  which  humor  depends. 
Bret  Harte's  stories  are  full  of  the  whimsical  humor  that 
is  so  created  by  the  turn  of  a  phrase  or  a  word.  The  fol- 
lowing is  from  Tennessee's  Partner: 

"  At  that  place  he  was  attracted  by  a  young  person  who 
waited  upon  table  at  the  hotel  where  he  took  his  meals. 
One  morning  he  said  something  to  her  which  caused  her 
to  smile  not  unkindly,  to  somewhat  coquettishly  break  a 
plate  of  toast  over  his  upturned,  serious,  simple  face,  and 
to  retreat  to  the  kitchen.  He  followed  her,  and  emerged 
a  few  moments  later,  covered  with  toast  and  victory." 

Here  there  is  humor,  in  the  first  place,  in  the  word 
"  coquettishly,"  because  breaking  a  plate  of  toast  over  a 
man's  head,  under  the  circumstances  of  life  as  most  of  us 
live,  is  quite  incongruous  with  coquetry.  Again  there  is 


WORDS,  THEIR  ASSOCIATIONS  AND  CONNOTATIONS     43 

incongruity  in  the  joining  together  of  toast  and  victory,  the 
material  and  the  immaterial,  the  literal  and  the  meta- 
phorical. There  is  humor  of  the  same  sort  in  this  sen- 
tence a  little  farther  on  in  the  same  story.  "  The  Judge 
— who  was  also  his  captor — for  a  moment  vaguely  regretted 
that  he  had  not  shot  him  '  on  sight '  that  morning,  but 
presently  dismissed  this  human  weakness  as  unworthy  of 
the  judicial  mind."  In  this  the  humor  comes  from  the 
disagreement  between  regret  for  not  having  shot  a  man 
and  the  labeling  of  that  regret  as  "  human  weakness. " 
This  incongruity  is  more  striking  still  when  we  realize  that 
it  is  so  labeled  by  the  judge  in  his  judicial  character. 

In  the  Century  for  November,  1913,  Frederick  Lewis 
Allen  writes :  "  Suddenly  and  without  warning  the  netting 
gave  way  completely  and  fell  about  my  ears.  Can  you 
imagine  a  worse  predicament  than  to  be  pinned  under  so 
much  wreckage  with  a  mosquito  that  you  personally  dis- 
like?" Here  the  humor  is  in  the  final  phrase,  so  much 
out  of  agreement  with  the  fact,  so  inadequate,  so  obviously 
an  under-statement. 

33.  There  is  one  heightening  of  style  that  has,  perhaps, 
occasioned  more  analysis  and  discussion  than  any  other, 
the  heightening  that  comes  from  imagery  and  figure.  It  is 
not  a  matter  of  any  great  moment  whether  a  figure  is 
a  simile  or  a  metaphor  or  a  transferred  epithet,  but  what 
is  of  importance  is  its  character  and  function  as  clarifying 
or  intensifying  the  writer's  ideas.  These  two  offices  may 
be  combined  in  one  figure,  but  primarily  they  are  distinct 
and  different.  The  figure  that  illustrates  a  point  merely,  that 
helps  the  reader  to  understand,  that  clarifies  meaning,  bring- 
ing it  home  more  surely  to  the  intelligence,  has  its  place 
naturally  in  impersonal  writing.  The  figure  that  expands 
meaning,  that  makes  it  more  alive,  that  brings  it  home  to  the 
senses  and  the  feelings  as  well  as  to  the  intelligence,  will  be 


44  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

employed  in  the  other  sort  of  writing,  the  personal,  and 
not  in  the  impersonal.  This  difference  in  the  character 
and  use  of  figures  runs  through  all  literature,  and  it  would 
be  quite  possible  to  make  a  shrewd  guess  at  the  school  of 
literary  art  to  which  any  given  work  belongs  on  the  show- 
ing of  a  sufficient  number  of  figures  taken  from  it.  In 
the  list  below  the  figures  in  the  first  group  are  clarifying 
figures,  and  those  in  the  second  group  are  intensifying. 

GROUP  I. 

"  Horace's  wit  and  Virgil's  state, 
He  did  not  steal,  but  emulate." 

SIR  JOHN  DENHAM. 

"  Syphax,  your  zeal  becomes  importunate ; 
I've  hitherto  permitted  it  to  rave, 
And  talk  at  large,  but  learn  to  keep  it  in." 

JOSEPH  ADDISON. 

"  They  cry,  This  is  a  bad  summer!  as  if  we  ever  had 
any  other.  The  best  sun  we  have  is  made  of  Newcastle 
coal."  HORACE  WALPOLE. 

"  And  hark,  how  loud  the  woods  invite  you  forth  in  all 
your  gayest  trim."  JAMES  THOMSON. 

GROUP  II. 

"  If  yet  he  can  oppose  the  mighty  torrent 
That  bears  down  Rome,  and  all  her  gods,  before  it." 

JOSEPH  ADDISON. 

"  The  old  year's  dead  hands  are  full  of  their  dead  flowers." 
ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE. 

"  Dawn  skims  the  sea  with  flying  feet  of  gold." 

ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE. 


WORDS,  THEIR  ASSOCIATIONS  AND  CONNOTATIONS     45 

"  In  this  moment  which,  though  the  violent  men  that 
drove  the  storm  could  not  know  it,  was  the  doom  of  their 
effort,  a  spirit  that  was  not  wholly  human  disturbed  the 
nights  with  Tragedy ;  the  Terror  boiled,  and  men  approached 
the  limits  where  despair  and  vision  meet.  It  was  the  last 
clutch  of  the  great  wrestling,  the  moment  of  tottering  be- 
fore the  throw.  The  mind  of  Paris  lost  hold  of  the  ground ; 
Dalua,  the  oldest  of  the  gods,  the  spirit  of  Celtic  madness, 
took  a  part  in  this  strain  of  the  western  fortunes,  vengeance 
and  darkness  entered  with  him  also.  Twisted  into  the  same 
whirlwind,  all  the  heroisms  and  the  first  victories  ap- 
peared/' 

Robespierre,  by  HILAIRE  BELLoc.1 

The  first  figure  of  group  one  has,  no  doubt,  a  touch  of 
intensification.  It  is  more  vigorous  to  steal  than  to  model 
after  or  copy,  but  primarily  the  figure  is  a  simplification 
of  the  meaning.  The  figure  makes  that  meaning  more  direct 
and  more  unmistakable.  The  same  is  true  of  the  second 
figure.  It  is  simpler,  both  in  form  of  statement  and  in 
mental  processes  involved  in  understanding,  to  say  that 
zeal  is  importunate  than  to  say  that  Syphax  is  importunate 
in  his  zeal.  This  way  of  being  simpler  is  also  a  way  of 
being  clearer. 

The  figures  from  Addison  and  Swinburne  in  group  two 
may  be  passed  over  as  being  obviously  unlike  those  in 
group  one.  The  paragraph  from  Hilaire  Belloc  is  more 
striking  in  being  so  crowded  with  the  figurative.  The 
political  action  that  he  is  discussing  becomes  the  storm 
in  his  imagery,  and  as  a  storm  we  feel  its  violence  the 
more.  In  the  same  way  the  personification  of  the  abstract, 
personal,  human,  and  social  forces  of  the  hour  as  a  spirit 
makes  them  more  terrible  as  they  "  disturb  the  night  with 
Tragedy."  So  it  is  in  the  change  of  these  struggling  forces 
to  the  "  last  clutch  of  the  great  wrestling,"  and  so  again 
1  By  permission  of  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 


46  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

it  is  in  the  introduction  of  "  Dalua,  the  oldest  of  the 
gods." 

34.  All  through  this  we  have  figures  employed  for 
intensifying  the  thought.  Through  them  the  writing  grips 
our  imagination  and  our  senses.  We  begin  to  create  over 
again  in  our  own  minds  that  vortex  of  human  passions 
and  battling  forces  that  was  the  French  Revolution,  and 
it  becomes,  not  a  fact,  but  a  fascination.  This  is  an  effect 
of  style.  It  is  a  consequence  of  the  form  given  to  the 
subject-matter,  and  not  of  that  subject-matter  itself  or  its 
arrangement.  In  a  literary  way,  happy  indeed  is  the 
writer  who  has  command  of  such  a  style  as  we  have  in 
this  paragraph  and  can  use  it  to  such  effect. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  it  is  not  always 
well  to  write  in  a  style  as  highly  colored  as  this.  Now 
and  then  our  thoughts  should  travel  abroad  in  sober  gray. 
However  beautiful  a  richer  dress  may  be,  if  it  is  not  suited 
to  the  occasion,  as  a  dress  of  words  it  is  in  danger  of 
becoming  gush  or  bombast  or  "  fine  writing."  "  Fine 
writing  "  was  not  thought  to  be  in  bad  taste  a  half-century 
ago,  and  there  are  still  persons  in  their  seventies  or  late 
sixties  who  admire  it.  Speaking  for  the  taste  of  the 
present,  Ernest  Poole  in  his  novel,  The  Harbor,  tells  how 
his  hero  as  a  college  freshman,  doing  his  best  to  make  a 
place  on  the  college  paper,  put  all  his  "  descriptive  powers  " 
to  use,  until  a  fat  senior  editor  asked  sneeringly,  "  Fresh- 
man, why  these  flowers  ? "  After  that  he  dropped  the 
flowers  out  of  his  style.  There  is  a  place  for  flowers 
and  a  place  for  picture  hats,  and  perhaps  a  place  for  shoes 
that  catch  the  eye  a  block  away,  but  it  is  not  always  wise 
to  be  a  blaze  of  color.  The  observer  may  so  be  the  more 
surely  led  to  make  discovery  that  the  gold  thread  is  only 
the  cheapest  tinsel  and  the  silk  but  cotton  with  a  gloss. 


THE  RHYTHM  OF  PROSE 

35.  EARNESTNESS,  deep  feeling,  sincerity  reveal  themselves 
in  more  than  words.  Often  I  have  listened  to  an  impas- 
sioned speaker  and  for  the  moment  have  wondered  how 
with  such  sure  swiftness  he  could  master  and  marshal 
such  telling  words  into  their  ranks  and  orders  and  keep  them 
going  on  and  on  as  if  at  the  drum-beat  of  some  supreme 
call  to  marching  hosts.  Somehow  under  the  push  of  strong 
emotions,  the  mind  works  with  more  certitude,  it  more 
readily  puts  aside  the  unrelated  fact,  the  inharmonious 
symbol,  the  discordant  image,  achieving  a  kind  of  stride 
and  leaving  behind  it  everything  that  does  not  fall  into 
the  regularity  of  that  movement.  Only  yesterday  I  read  of 
some  work  that  needed  to  be  done  quickly  somewhere  on 
one  of  the  battle-lines  in  Europe.  The  man  who  was  direct- 
ing the  work  got  some  pipers  to  play  their  pipes  that 
the  workers  might  work  in  time  with  their  music,  and 
so  they  did  the  work  more  quickly  and  did  it  with  more 
ease  and  pleasure.  There  seems  to  be  at  once  an  accelera- 
tion of  thought  and  a  simplification  of  its  processes  in  such 
regularity  of  movement,  and  this  at  a  lower  level  finds 
its  exemplification  as  a  law  of  human  action  in  the  greater 
efficiency  of  workmen  doing  their  work  to  the  pulse  of 
music. 

The  rhythms  of  prose  are  not  easily  analyzed.  They  are 
not  so  apparent  as  in  poetry,  but  they  are  none  the  less 
real.  Any  writing  that  pleases  must  have  its  breathing 
places,  its  pauses,  properly  ordered,  and  it  must  have  some 

47 


48  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

regularity  in  the  recurrence  of  its  accents  and  some  smooth- 
ness in  the  flow  of  its  sounds.  Part  of  the  effectiveness 
of  parallelism  is  in  the  fact  that  the  likeness  of  clause 
to  clause,  of  phrase  to  phrase,  makes  these  phrases  or 
clauses  more  or  less  rhythmical  in  their  succession.  In 
the  following  paragraph  from  The  Wind  in  the  Wil- 
lows,1 by  Kenneth  Grahame,  the  rhythmic  breaks  or 
pauses,  as  I  should  read  it,  are  indicated  by  slanting  lines. 

"  '  Yes,  but  this  time  it's  more  serious/  /  said  the  Rat 
gravely.  /  '  He's  been  missing  for  some  days  now,  /  and 
the  Otters  have  hunted  everywhere,  high  and  low,  /  with- 
out finding  the  slightest  trace.  /  And  they've  asked  every 
animal,  too,  /  for  miles  around,  /  and  no  one  knows  any- 
thing about  'him.  /  'Otter'-s  evidently  more  anxious  than 
he'll  admit.  /  Fgot  .out  of  him  that  young  Portly  /  hasn't 
learnt  to  swim  very  well  yet,  /  and  I  can  see  he's  think- 
ing of  the  weir.  /  There's  a  lot  of  water  coming  down 
still,  /  considering  the  time  of  the  year,  /  and  the  place 
always  had  a  fascination  for  the  child.  /  And  then  there 
are  / — well,  traps  and  things  / — you  know.  /  Otter's  not 
the  fellow  to  be  nervous  /  about  any  son  of  his  before  it's 
time.  /  And  now  he  is  nervous.  /  When  I  left,  he  came 
out  with  me  / — said  he  wanted  some  air,  /  and  talked  about 
stretching  his  legs.  /  But  I  could  see  it  wasn't  that,  /  so 
I  drew  him  out  and  pumped  him,  /  and  got  it  all  from  him 
at  last.  /  He  was  going  to  spend  the  night  /  watching  by 
the  ford.  /  You  know  the  place  where  the  old  ford  used 
to  be,  /  in  by-gone  days  before  they  built  the  bridge  ? ' "  / 

In  this  the  average  length  of  the  rhythmic  unit  in  words 
is  a  fraction  less  than  seven,  and  one-fourth  of  all  the 
units,  eight  out  of  the  thirty-one,  contain  seven  words. 
Almost  a  fourth,  seven,  are  eight  words  long.  These  are 
fairly  short  units,  and  they  are  very  little  broken  within 
themselves.  Their  general  effect  is  that  of  liveliness  and 
1  By  permission  of  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 


THE  RHYTHM  OF  PROSE  49 

animated  movement.  Certainly  it  is  not  the  rhythmic  order- 
ing alone  that  gives  the  paragraph  that  quality,  but  that 
is  an  important  contributory  element  in  the  style.  Very  dif- 
ferent is  the  effect  of  the  rhythmic  movement  in  the  fol- 
lowing from  the  chapter  on  Marlowe  in  The  Age  of  Shake- 
speare by  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne : 1 

11  Of  The  Massacre  at  Paris  /  it  is  impossible  to- 
judge  fairly /from  the  garbled  fragment  of  its  genuine 
text,  /  which  is  all  that  has  come  down  to  us//  To  Mr. 
Collier,  among  numberless  other  obligations,  /  we  owe  the 
discovery  of  a  striking  passage  excised  in  the  piratical  edi- 
tion /  which  gives  us  the  only  version  extant  of  this  un- 
lucky play ;  /  and  which,  /  it  must  be  allowed,  /  contains 
nothing  of  quite  equal  value.  /  This  is  obviously  an  occa- 
sional and  polemical  work,  /  and  being  as  it  is  overcharged 
with  the  anti-Catholic  passion  of  the  time,  /  has  a  typical 
quality  which  gives  it  some  empirical  significance  and  inter- 
est. /  That  anti-papal  ardor  is  indeed  the  only  note  of 
unity  in  a  rough  and  ragged  chronicle  /  which  shambles 
and  stumbles  onward  from  the  death  of  Queen  Jeanne  of 
Navarre  /  to  the  murder  of  the  last  Valois.  /  It  is  impos- 
sible to  conjecture  what  it  would  be  fruitless  to  affirm,  / 
that  it  gave  a  hint  in  the  next  century  to  Nathaniel  Lee  / 
for  his  far  superior  and  really  admirable  tragedy  on  the 
same  subject,  /  issued  ninety-seven  years  after  the  death 
of  Marlowe."/ 

The  rhythmic  units  are  longer  in  this,  and  that  contrib- 
utes to  a  much  greater  gravity  of  tone.  It  is  much  more 
slow-moving,  and  the  longer  rhythms  are  themselves  much 
more  broken.  Its  music  is  also  richer,  no  doubt,  richer 
than  it  could  be  if  the  pauses  came  at  shorter  and  more 
uniform  intervals.  Too  great  uniformity  in  the  length  of 
phrases  in  prose  soon  produces  a  sense  of  bareness  and  of 
an  unnatural  aping  of  verse. 

1  By  permission  of  Harper  &  Bros. 


5o  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

36.  "  The  day  of  his  coming,  /  the  Queen  received  him  in 
the  Long  Parlor,  /  dressed  mostly  in  white,  /  with  a  little 
black  here  and  there.  /  /  She  stood  about  mid-floor,  / 
with  her  women,  pages,  and  gentlemen  of  the  household,  / 
and  tried  to  control  her  excitement.  /  /  Those  who  knew 
her  best,  /  either  by  opportunity  or  keen  study,  /  considered 
that  she  had  made  up  her  mind  already.  /  /  This  was  a 
marriage,  /  this  rrieeting  of  cousins :  /  /  here  in  her  white 
and  faint  rose,  /  shivering  like  the  dawn  on  the  brink  of 
new  day,  /  with  fixed  eyes  and  quick  breath  / — here  among 
her  maidens  stood  the  bride.  /  /  Appearances  favored  the 
guess  / — which  yet  remained  a  guess.  /  /  She  had  traveled 
far  and  awfully ;  /  but  had  told  no  one,  /  spoken  no  whis- 
pers of  her  journeyings  since  that  day  of  shame  and  a 
burning  face,  /  when  she  had  sent  Adam  Gordon  to  Edin- 
burgh Castle,  /  heard  Melvill's  message,  /  and  scared  away 
Chatelard  to  his  dog's  death.  /  /  Not  a  soul  knew  where 
her  soul  had  been,  /  or  whither  it  had  now  flown  for  ref- 
uge :  /  /  but  two  guessed,  /  and  one  other  had  an  inkling  / 
— the  judging  Italian."  /  / 

The  preceding  paragraph  from  Maurice  Hewlett's  The 
Queen's  Quair*  is  a  very  beautiful  bit  of  prose  rhythm. 
It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  rhythm  is  primarily  some 
regularity  in  the  recurrence  of  units  of  thought.  In  poetry 
of  the  nobler  sort  it  is  very  complex.  In  the  blank  verse 
of  Shakespeare's  plays  we  can  observe  at  least  four  kinds 
of  rhythm  carried  along  together.  There  is  first  the  rhythm 
of  lines  of  equal  length.  Then  there  is  the  rhythm  of 
alternate  accented  syllables  and  unaccented  syllables  in  each 
line.  The  rhythm  of  the  full  line  is  also  frequently  broken 
up  further  by  a  median  pause,  the  caesura.  Then  there  is 
the  rhythm  of  the  thought  units,  which  are  of  various 
lengths,  but  which  should  maintain  some  simple  ratio  be- 
tween their  length  and  that  of  the  line. 

37.  Now,  prose  rhythm  must  not  be  the  rhythm  of 
1  By  permission  of  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 


THE  RHYTHM  OF  PROSE  51 

poetry.  It  must  not  be  as  full  and  pronounced,  or  we 
shall  feel  that  it  is  artificial,  strained,  false.  This  from 
Hewlett  is  dangerously  near  that,  but  the  rhythm  is  justi- 
fied by  the  high  excitement  of  the  story  here  and  its  endur- 
ing romance.  The  pauses  to  which  attention  is  directed 
by  the  double  bars,  it  will  be  seen,  are  more  marked  than 
the  others,  and  they  come  somewhat  regularly,  as  do  the 
others.  At  each  one  of  these  sharper  rhythmic  pauses  there 
is  a  more  positive  emphasis  and  falling  accentuation.  This 
is  particularly  noticeable  in  the  group  of  smaller  rhythmic 
units  ending  with  the  clause,  "  here  among  her  maidens 
stood  the  bride."  The  three  phrases  preceding  this,  with 
their  pauses,  are  all  phrases  of  suspense,  the  suspense  being 
the  more  evident  by  reason  of  the  rhythm,  and  here  that 
suspense  is  brought  to  a  climax  and  closed.  It  is  a  prime 
effect  of  rhythm  that,  carrying  the  idea  forward  by  de- 
tachments, as  it  were,  it  can  bring  these  detachments  to 
a  halt  together  at  easy  intervals  and  can  let  us  see  them 
deploy  with  a  show  of  colors. 

It  is  a  necessity  of  the  mind  that  it  shall  have  resting 
places  in  any  current  of  ideas,  and  if  those  resting  places 
come  in  our  reading  with  some  degree  of  regularity,  we 
feel  that  our  expectation  has  been  satisfied  rather  than 
balked,  and  that  adds  materially  to  the  pleasure  of  the 
reading.  At  the  same  time,  let  it  be  said  again,  it  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  the  rhythm  of  prose  must  not  be  too  evi- 
dent, it  must  not  be  too  monotonous  as  if  there  were  no  play 
or  spontaneity  in  the  mind  of  the  writer,  it  must  not  be  inap- 
propriate to  the  mood  of  the  particular  writing.  In  ani- 
mated discourse,  the  stops  may  be  abrupt,  while  in  that 
which  is  more  meditative,  they  should  have  less  interrupt- 
ing emphasis.  In  the  following  from  Edward  Hyde,  Earl 
of  Clarendon,  there  is  a  slower  and  more  quiet  music, 
made  up  of  longer  rhythmic  units  and  given  less  accen- 


52  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

tual   decisiveness    in   the   words   with   which   those   units 
close. 

"  He  was  superior  to  all  those  passions  and  affections 
which  attend  vulgar  minds,  /  and  was  guilty  of  no  other 
ambition  than  of  knowledge,  /  and  to  be  reputed  a  lover  of 
all  good  men ;  /  and  that  made  him  too  much  a  contemner 
of  those  arts,  /  which  must  be  indulged  in  the  transactions 
of  human  affairs.  /  /  In  the  last  short  parliament  he  was 
a  burgess  in  the  house  of  commons ;  /  and,  from  the  debates 
which  were  then  managed  with  all  imaginable  gravity  and 
sobriety,  /  he  contracted  such  a  reverence  to  parliaments,  / 
that  he  thought  it  really  impossible  they  could  ever  produce 
mischief  or  inconvenience  to  the  kingdom ;  /  or  that  the 
kingdom  could  be  tolerably  happy  in  the  intermission  of 
them.  /  /  And  from  the  unhappy  and  unseasonable  dis- 
solution of  that  convention,  /  he  harbored,  it  may  seem,  / 
some  jealousy  and  prejudice  to  the  court,  /  to  which  he 
was  not  before  immoderately  inclined ;  /  his  father  having 
wasted  a  full  fortune  there,  /  in  those  offices  and  employ- 
ments by  which  other  men  use  to  obtain  a  greater."// 

38.  Closely  related  to  rhythm,  since  it  affects  our  feel- 
ing for  the  pause  in  both  sentence  and  paragraph,  is  what 
I  shall  call  cajiencc.  In  the  quotation  from  Kenneth  Gra- 
hame  there  is  very  little  cadence.  Each  sentence  comes  to 
a  square  stop,  instead  of  dropping  to  a  level  of  rest. 
Sentences  and  paragraphs  may  come  to  a  close  without 
cadence  and  still  be  good  sentences  and  good  paragraphs. 
The  effect  of  abruptness  and  sharpness  which  such  sen- 
tences produce  may  be  desirable  in  the  particular  case, 
but,  for  a  more  equable  movement  and  for  a  nicer  sense 
of  tranquillity  and  rounded  completeness,  sentences  and 
paragraphs  should  close  in  a  cadence.  The  paragraph  from 
Swinburne  closes  so  in  the  phrase,  "  issued  ninety-seven 
years  after  the  death  of  Marlowe."  This  is  so  far  subor- 
dinate to  the  rest  of  the  sentence  that  it  marks  the  main 


THE  RHYTHM  OF  PROSE  53 

idea  as  closed,  and  yet  it  is   so  nearly  related   to   what 
has  preceded  as  not  to  seem  "  tacked  on." 

In  music  the  term  "  cadence  "  is  used  to  indicate  a  suc- 
cession of  chords,  a  progression,  that  brings  a  musical 
phrase,  a  group  of  phrases,  a  movement,  or  the  entire 
composition  to  a  close.  The  "  perfect  cadence "  is  the 
succession  in  order  of  the  harmony  on  the  subdominant, 
the  dominant,  and  the  tonic  of  the  scale.  The  ear  recog- 
nizes this  progression  as  having  something  of  finality,  and 
before  the  last  notes  have  been  reached  the  hearer  knows 
that  they  are  soon  to  come.  Sentences  and  paragraphs 
should  more  or  less  end  with  this  effect  of  having  been 
rounded  out.  Every  moving  art  form,  as  distinct  from 
stationary  forms  such  as  pictures,  statues,  and  works  of 
architecture,  has  a  rise  and  fall.  The  drama  goes  forward 
to  a  climax,  and  then  is  brought  back  to  the  level  of 
repose.  It  is  so  with  the  short  story  and  the  novel, 
with  the  poem  and  the  essay,  with  the  song  and  the  sym- 
phony. In  their  degrees,  it  is  true  of  the  sentence  and  the 
paragraph,  and  the  writer  who  has  not  cultivated  his  feel-  t 
ing  for  the  cadence  to  which  both  sentence  and  paragraph 
should  come,  does  not  achieve  an  easy  and  fluent  prose. 

We  shall  not  need  any  further  extracts  for  the  elucida- 
tion of  this  matter  of  cadence.  What  we  have  already  read 
from  Hewlett  is  excellently  illustrative  of  cadence,  both  in 
the  sentences  and  in  the  paragraph  itself.  The  second 
sentence,  for  instance,  is  simply  pictorial,  something  merely 
held  before  our  eyes,  until  the  last  group  of  words  gives 
interpretation  to  the  picture  and  finality  to  the  sentence. 
The  third  sentence  comes  to  its  climax  in  "  keen  study," 
and  finds  repose  in  "  made  up  her  mind  already."  From 
what  has  been  said  of  the  fourth  sentence  in  the  discussion 
of  the  rhythm  of  the  paragraph,  the  cadence  with  which  it 
closes  will  be  immediately  apparent.  It  is  worth  observ- 


54  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

ing  that  the  author  seems  to  have  been  peculiarly  con- 
scious of  this  cadence,  because  he  has  marked  die  break 
before  it  with  a  dash.  In  the  final  sentence  he  has  done 
the  same  thing.  The  climax  of  the  paragraph  is  readied 
in  the  last  clause  of  the  preceding  sentence,  "  scared  away 
Chitelard  to  his  dog's  death/'  This  sentence  has  brought 
to  its  height  the  question  of  the  inner  motives  of  Queen 
Mary,  and  then  the  problem  is  tentatively  resolved,  be- 
cause "  two  guessed,  and  one  other  had  an  inkling/'  Then, 
after  the  pause,  we  are  told  more  conclusively  who  that 
other  was,  and  the  revelation  is  given  the  higher  certitude, 
since  it  is  "the  judging  Italian/'  What  his  judgment  is 
we  are  not  told,  but  the  paragraph  drops  to  a  more  settled 
tone,  because  he  does  judge  and  because,  through  such  judg- 
ment, die  problem  of  the  queen's  attitude  must  reach  a 
solution. 

It  will  pay  us  to  glance  for  a  moment  at  the  extract  from 
Le  Gallierme  in  the  second  chapter.  Sentence  two  shows 
a  clear  cadence  in  the  "  happy  buzz  of  vanity  in  die  air," 
whkh  puts  the  fact  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  sentence  into 
place,  interpreting  it  in  terms  of  atmosphere  and  social 
tone.  The  third  sentence  ends  with  an  obvious  cadence, 
"  I  was  sad"  The  cadence  of  the  fifth  sentence  and  of 
die  paragraph  is,  "  so  much  marble  and  so  many  million- 
aires/' This  does  for  the  paragraph  what  the  close  of  the 
third  sentence  does  for  that  Interpreting  the  sentence, 
this  last  phrase  puts  upon  it  the  final  label  of  its  ton' 
reader  feels  always  the  need  of  having  the  question  raised 
in  the  sentence  or  the  paragraph  dropped  to  a  level  of  rest 
and  certitude.  It  is  never  pleasant  to  have  either  sentence 
or  paragraph  seem  to  be  left  hanging  in  the  air.  A 
is  therefore  satisfying  and  generally  necessary. 

39.    Style  in  prose  is  somewhat  affected  by  the  sounds 
of  the  words,  but  that  is  a  more  important  matter   in 


THE  RHYTHM  OF  PROSE  55 

poetry.  Probably  few  writers  are  conscious  of  the  sounds 
that  mark  their  writing  at  any  moment,  whether  liquids 
or  gutturals  or  explosives.  Of  the  movement  of  their  peri- 
ods, however,  all  good  writers  must  be  more  or  less  con- 
scious, and  a  good  style  is  hardly  achieved  without  the 
cultivation  of  some  feeling  for  rhythm  and  cadence  and  the 
symmetries  of  form  that  please  and  satisfy  the  ear  as 
the  thing  said  pleases  and  satisfies  the  mind. 


VI 

THE  LIVING  SPIRIT  AND  THE  DRESS 

40.  ONE  of  the  serious  problems  in  any  art  is  that  of 
maintaining  a  proper  relation  between  form  and  substance. 
This  is  both  a  matter  of  judgment  and  a  matter  of  keep- 
ing the  power  of  thought  and  the  power  of  expression  up 
to  the  same  level.  No  writer  can  be  truly  great  unless 
he  is  a  highly  original  force  as  a  thinker  and  is  also 
possessed  of  more  than  ordinary  command  of  his  medium 
of  expression,  language.  Many  men  are  gifted  in  ideas 
and  not  gifted  in  words.  They  may  contribute  substan- 
tially to  the  world's  intellectual  wealth,  but  they  will  not 
create  literature.  Many  other  men  are  gifted  in  words 
and  are  not  gifted  in  ideas,  and  they  also  will  not  create 
literature.  They  may  acquire  a  good  style,  but,  spending 
themselves  on  trivialities,  they  will  merely  expose  the  bar- 
renness of  their  thought  and  the  poverty  of  their  imagina- 
tion. The  more  they  heighten  their  styles  and  bring  the 
resources  of  language  to  crowd  the  little  that  they  have 
to  say  to  the  appearance  of  greater  importance  the  more 
their  limitations  will  be  evident  to  the  discerning.  Some- ' 
thing  of  the  mere  futility  of  the  multiplication  of  words 
is  to  be  seen  in  the  following  taken  from  a  recent  news- 
paper : 

"  As  though  to  tantalize  old  Sol  as  he  was  dropping 
from  earthly  sight,  little  clouds  would  come  and  hover 
between  him  and  me,  but  by  the  penetrating  rays  which  he 
sent  forth,  these  tormenting  clouds  were  soon  dissipated 

56 


THE  LIVING  SPIRIT  AND  THE  DRESS  57 

and  he  went  out  of  sight  in  all  the  splendor  of  his  great- 
ness, throwing  back,  as  it  were,  a  fond  adieu  to  the  parting 
day.  As  if  to  require  a  gentle  reverence  for  the  giver 
of  heat  and  light,  the  zephyrs  compelled  ripening  grain, 
each  growing  stalk  of  corn  and  the  blossoming  meadows 
to  bow  their  heads  in  obeisance  to  his  unsurpassed  great- 
ness." 

The  personification  of  the  sun  in  the  first  sentence  is 
not  real,  and  the  fancy  that  the  clouds  tantalize  "  old  Sol " 
is  also  unreal.  In  some  connections  we  might  think  that 
this  unreality  had  a  humorous  intention,  but  that  is 
clearly  not  the  author's  mood.  Not  being  humor,  it 
can  be  called  nothing  better  than  fancy  of  a  vicious  sort, 
and  not  imagination,  as  the  writer  presumably  thought. 
Since  the  sun  has  not  become  a  person,  we  are  not  likely 
to  believe  in  the  fond  adieu.  The  gentle  reverence  that 
compels  the  blossoming  meadows  to  bow  the  head  is,  it 
seems  to  me,  quite  absurd,  and  the  whole  paragraph  is 
no  more  than  a  tissue  of  words  spun  into  something  that 
might  be  pretty,  if  there  were  any  fact  back  of  the  figure, 
if  the  colors  were  not  so  sure  to  fade  as  soon  as  you  really 
look  at  them.  The  following  paragraph,  also  found  in  a 
recent  newspaper,  is  even  worse  than  the  paragraph  we 
have  just  read : 

"  The  running  of  the  waters,  as  they  sing  their  way  to 
the  sea,  tells  us  the  tale  of  all  the  years.  The  murmur  of 
the  river  is  a  song,  gentle,  sometimes  sad,  but  oftener 
full  of  joy  and  life,  if  you  but  listen  to  the  full  harmony 
of  its  gurgling  notes,  as  they  reach  the  ear  at  a  distance. 
Lying  on  its  grass-carpeted  banks,  listening  intently,  and 
knowing  how  to  interpret  its  message,  you  hear  it  telling 
you  all  the  mystery  of  the  passing  years,  in  a  language, 
so  sweet  and  tender,  that  none  but  the  ear  of  him  who 
loves  the  rolling  of  the  waters  can  ever  catch  its  secret 
message,  or  know  that  it  has  a  story  all  its  own." 


58  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

It  may  be  very  pleasing  to  some  minds  to  think  of  the 
waters  as  telling  "  the  story  of  all  the  years,"  but  it  is 
unfortunately  not  true,  and  we  cannot  escape  recognition 
of  that  as  we  read.  Further,  the  "  secret  message  "  of  the 
waters  and  the  "  story  all  its  own  "  are  figments  of  the 
author's  brain  that  do  not  find  a  resting-place  in  the  mind 
of  the  reader.  The  style  of  both  of  these  paragraphs  is 
pitched  so  high  that  the  falsity  of  the  figures  and  the  facts 
is  by  that  much  the  more  distressing. 

"  The  most  miserable  man  I  ever  knew  was  one  who 
married  a  rich  woman,  and  looked  after  her  thousand  acres 
and  made  reports  of  her  bonds  and  stocks.  If  the  stocks 
failed  to  pay  dividends  he  was  asked,  why?  And  if  the 
acres  had  a  fallow  year  this  married  man  had  to  explain 
to  a  tearful  wife,  an  irate  mother-in-law,  and  sundry  sar- 
castic next  of  kin.  When  he  wanted  funds  for  himself 
he  was  given  dole,  and  if  he  wished  to  invite  guests 
he  had  to  prove  them  standard  bred  and  freed  from  fault 
and  blemish.  My  friend  was  a  Jeffersonian  Democrat,  and 
longed  for  the  Life  of  Simplicity,  but  at  dinner  each  day 
an  awful  butler  in  solemn  black,  who  saw  nothing  and 
everything,  kept  a  death  watch  until  the  sweat  started  on 
the  poor  victim's  forehead  and  appetite  vanished.  If  he 
rode  out  it  was  behind  horses  with  docked  tails,  and  a 
flunkey  that  flunked  without  ceasing/' 

The  above  was  also  picked  up  from  the  casual  literature 
of  periodical  print.  It  is  the  work  of  a  brilliant  writer, 
as  the  other  two  selections  are  not,  but,  in  a  different  way, 
it  is  over-stressed.  To  be  sure,  it  has  a  jauntier  air,  is  not 
so  deadly  sober,  and  yet  any  emphasis  beyond  that  which 
is  just  and  true  creates  an  impression  of  insincerity  or  of 
mental  unbalance.  It  is  important  to  hold  the  confidence 
of  readers,  and  that  cannot  be  done  by  extravagances  either 
of  statement  or  of  form.  Here  is  one  more  illustration 
of  the  same  fault,  perhaps  grosser  than  any  of  the  others. 


THE  LIVING  SPIRIT  AND  THE  DRESS  59 

"  The  world  is  lousy  with  quacks. 

"  There  are  quacks  in  all  professions,  all  trades,  ^  all 
classes,  all  '  movements/  There  are  quacks  in  medicine, 
quacks  in  education,  quacks  in  religion,  quacks  in  reform, 
quacks  in  literature,  quacks  in  politics. 

"  And  the  quacks  quack  so  loud  that  the  honest  man  is 
often  unheard. 

"  Quacks  are  generally  very  popular  because  the  people 
do  not  know  a  good  man  when  they  see  him,  and  they 
think  the  quack  is  an  honest  man — because  he  quacks  so 
zealously.  Quacks  '  get  by '  because  they  advertise ;  be- 
cause they  tell  us  cheap,  pleasing  lies  and  flatter  us  in  our 
weakness,  bully  us,  and  take  advantage  of  our  ignorance. 

"  A  quack  is  a  noisy,  meddlesome  demagogue,  an  intel- 
lectual '  scab/  A  quack  is  a  little  man  trying  to  hold  a 
big  man's  job,  and  he  fills  up  the  vacant  spaces  in  it  with 
wind.  A  quack  is  a  public  nuisance/' 

The  effort  to  say  this  strongly  has  almost  turned  it  into 
a  scream.  No  quack  could  quack  more  loudly.  The  para- 
graphing is  deliberately  planned  to  make  each  sentence 
a  separate  shout.  The  welter  of  parallelism  is  for  a  like 
purpose.  The  diction  is  seemingly  as  loud  as  the  writer 
could  make  it. 

41.  No  doubt  there  is  power  of  a  sort  in  such  a  style. 
It  secures  a  kind  of  attention,  as  does  the  newsboy  shout- 
ing extras  on  the  street,  but  it  is  not  a  way  to  write  if 
one  wishes  to  retain  his  own  self-respect  as  an  honest  man, 
or  that  of  his  fellows.  All  of  the  paragraphs  quoted  in 
this  chapter,  whether  we  call  them  gush  or  bombast  or 
"  fine  writing/'  are  indefensible  in  their  styles  according  to 
any  reasonable  canons  of  good  taste. 

The  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  goes  back  to  the  first 
sentence  in  the  chapter.  The  form  of  any  writing  must 
have  due  relation  to  the  subject-matter.  That  does  not  mean 
at  all  that  simple  things  should  be  written  in  a  style  that 
is  dull  and  plain.  Often  the  simple  thing  will  be  wonder- 


60  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

fully  significant  when  it  is  seen  in  all  its  real  relations. 
Then  all  the  genius  of  the  artist  may  be  spent  in  height- 
ening the  style,  in  arranging  sentences  for  emphasis,  in 
choosing  the  most  gripping  words,  in  piling  phrase  upon 
phrase,  in  giving  it  all  the  animation  and  vitality  of  a 
fitting  rhythmic  order.  Doing  that  with  judgment  is  but 
bringing  all  the  implications  of  the  subject  out  to  the  light. 
It  is  only  a  simple  thing  that  serves  for  the  beginning 
of  the  passage  quoted  from  Le  Gallienne  in  the  second 
chapter,  but  it  has  significance  enough  for  the  kindling  of 
the  style  to  a  remarkable  richness  that  is  yet  held  with 
wonderful  nicety  to  the  mood  and  weight  of  the  theme. 
In  that  balance  and  poise  of  mind  that  keep  the  heat  up  but 
never  let  it  bring  the  steam  to  a  pressure  beyond  the  needs 
of  the  road  and  the  load  is  to  be  found  one  of  the  im- 
portant secrets  of  good  writing. 


VII 
QUESTIONS  OF  USAGE 

42.  So  far,  in  the  discussion  of  style,  emphasis  has  been 
put  upon  the  laws  of  composition  as  being  natural  and 
inherent,  rather  than  arbitrary.     Exception  must  be  made, 
in  part,  with  relation  to  the  laws  of  usage.     It  is  proper 
to  say  "  I  saw,"  and  grossly  improper  to  say  "  I  seen," 
because   language   has   so   developed,   and   not   because   it 
might  not  have  developed  otherwise.     From  the  day  when 
we  begin  learning  to  talk,  we  all  spend  a  great  deal  of  time 
acquainting  ourselves  with  the  laws  of  usage.     It  is  an  in- 
tricate matter,  more  intricate  and  voluminous  than  we  some- 
times  realize,   and   it  is   not  difficult  to   understand   why 
some  learners  are  often  very  impatient  during  the  proc- 
ess  of    learning   and   others    refuse   to    carry    it    through. 
Why  should  we  say  things  in  a  prescribed  fashion?    What 
difference  does  it  make  how  we  say  things,  if  we  make  our- 
selves understood?    How  far  are  the  laws  of  usage  valid, 
and  what  is  the  substantial  basis  for  them? 

43.  In  the  first  place,  agreeable  human  relationships  are 
maintained  only  among  those  who  are  willing  to  yield  to 
some  sort  of  common  modus  Vivendi.     Obviously  such  a 
ground  for  fellowship  must  establish  itself  first  in  those 
externals   of   our   lives   through   which   we   most   directly 
make  approach  to  one  another,  our  dress,  our  manners, 
our   speech.     The   social   conventions   begin   here,   and   it 
should  be  borne  in  mind  carefully  that  the  conventions  of 
speech  are  not  so  much  academic  as  social.     Permit  your- 
self to  be  careless  to  a  certain  degree,  and  you  must  not 

61 


62  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

expect  to  be  received  in  society  at  a  certain  level.  Be- 
come more  careless  with  regard  to  the  niceties  of  your 
native  tongue,  and,  other  things  being  equal,  you  drop  to 
a  still  lower  social  level.  Some  years  ago  Maurice  Thomp- 
son, writing  in  the  Independent,  said  that  the  pronunciation 
of  the  word  exquisite  with  the  accent  on  the  second  syl- 
lable instead  of  on  the  first  was  enough  to  shut  one  out 
from  the  company  of  the  elect  to  enforced  fellowship 
with  the  barbarians.  That  is,  perhaps,  a  somewhat  severe 
pronouncement,  but  certainly,  while  such  lapses  may  leave 
one  at  home  and  welcome  among  the  parvenus  of  culture, 
any  large  number  of  them  will  close  the  doors  of  persons 
of  the  better  sort  against  us  almost  universally. 

No  doubt  social  exclusion  of  that  sort  will  be  a  mat- 
ter of  little  moment  to  many,  but  the  college  man,  or  woman, 
as  far  as  his  personal  presentation  of  himself  is  concerned, 
ought  to  be  acceptable  anywhere.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  he  is  not  necessarily  so  acceptable  at  all.  I  have 
seen  a  college  senior  walking  in  an  academic  procession  on 
commencement  day  and  chewing  gum.  Certainly  such  a  col- 
lege student's  chance  of  being  received  on  equal  terms 
among  ladies  and  gentlemen  is  negligible.  His  exclusion, 
too,  is  not  a  matter  of  the  maintenance  of  artificial  and 
snobbish  distinctions.  The  person  who  chews  gum  is  offen- 
sive to  all  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  whose  presence  he 
carries  forward  that  jaw-exercising  activity.  It  is  natural 
and  quite  excusable  that  they  should  wish  to  avoid  being 
irritated  by  his  boorishness. 

As  a  matter  of  manners  this  is  merely  a  somewhat 
emphatic  illustration  of  the  principle  at  issue.  That  prin- 
ciple is  more  subtly  operative,  perhaps,  in  the  use  of  lan- 
guage, but  it  is  operative  no  less  certainly.  A  fairly 
conventional  speech  is  as  much  a  necessity  of  our  accord 
with  social  usage,  and  for  educated  people,  at  least,  it  is  quite 


QUESTIONS  OF  USAGE  63 

as  important  that  we  shall  not  be  offensive  in  that  way 
as  that  we  shall  not  offend  by  the  carelessness  and  dis- 
courtesy of  our  personal  conduct. 

A  friend  of  mine  tells  a  little  story  that  seems  in  place 
here.  Starting  out  for  the  office  in  his  automobile  in  the 
morning,  he  very  often  passed  a  neighbor  girl  on  her  way 
to  high  school.  "  How  are  you,  Thekla?  "  was  his  general 
greeting,  and  her  invariable  reply  was,  "  Just  fine."  After 
the  passage  of  several  years  during  which  he  had  not  met 
her,  he  was  in  the  car  with  his  wife  when  he  saw  the  girl 
on  the  sidewalk  in  front  of  them.  "  I'll  see  what  she'll 
say  to  me  now,"  he  told  his  wife.  "  It  won't  be  what  it 
used  to  be,"  she  assured  him.  "  Thekla's  been  away  for 
two  years  at  -  —,"  naming  a  New  England  college  for 
women.  He  stopped  his  car  at  the  edge  of  the  walk. 
"  How  are  you,  Thekla?  "  he  said.  "  Just  fine,"  she  drawled 
in  the  fashion  of  her  home  training  unconquered  by  her 
college.  "  Hopeless,"  was  my  friend's  comment  as  he  rode 
on  in  his  car. 

44.  Whatever  should  be  a  young  man's  reason  for  going 
to  college,  he  probably  does  go  either  to  secure  for  him- 
self larger  human  advantages  in  the  personal  relations  of 
life  or  to  increase  his  working  efficiency  and  its  rewards. 
On  the  assumption  that  his  purpose  is,  not  the  first  of  these, 
but  the  second,  it  may  well  be  asked  why  he  should  expect 
a  prospective  employer  of  his  services  as  a  commercial 
chemist,  for  instance,  to  have  confidence  in  his  accuracy 
when  he  is  grossly  inaccurate  in  a  thing  so  much  the 
every-day  business  of  life  as  talking.  Why  should  he  think 
that  anyone  might  trust  his  conclusions  as  an  expert  in 
social  science,  a  thing  that  he  has  begun  to  study  only 
in  his  junior  year,  when  he  is  shoddily  inexpert  in  the 
prime  means  of  maintaining  social  relationships,  a  thing 
that  he  has  been  trying  to  master  since  his  second  birth- 


64  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

day?  Back  of  all  this,  too,  is  another  question.  What 
are  the  antecedents  of  my  young  man  with  the  new  sheep- 
skin? Were  his  formative  years,  the  years  in  the  home, 
such  as  to  encourage  faith  in  the  soundness  of  his  intel- 
lectual processes?  Was  he  brought  up  to  be  thorough, 
careful,  exact,  to  take  pride  in  himself  and  in  his  presen- 
tation of  himself  in  speech?  If  he  is  not  a  high-grade 
man,  he  will  quite  certainly  be  slovenly  in  his  use  of  lan- 
guage, and  a  discerning  interrogator  will  perhaps  need 
no  more  than  a  letter  or  a  brief  talk  to  make  that  dis- 
covery. The  world  is  justified  in  expecting  the  college 
man  to  use  language,  not  only  with  more  than  usual  ac- 
curacy, but  also  with  more  than  usual  distinction. 

45.  It  is  for  these  reasons  that  there  are  laws  of  usage 
and  that  they  have  some  binding  force.  How  great  that 
binding  force  is  may  properly  be  the  next  question.  Igno- 
rance of  them  or  disregard  of  them  is  generally  held  to 
mark  one  as  provincial,  but  what  is  provincialism?  There 
is  so  good  a  word  on  this  subject  under  the  head  "  The 
Point  of  View"  in  Scribner's  Magazine  for  May,  1915, 
that  it  may  serve  as  an  excellent  statement  upon  which  to 
rest  a  conclusion. 

"  In  spite  of  popular  usage  provincialism  does  not  con- 
sist necessarily  in  living  apart  from  a  large  city.  The 
name  implies  less  an  accident  of  position  than  a  mental 
bias :  an  exclusive  satisfaction  with  some  one  particular 
province  of  the  universe.  In  this  sense  Broadway  is  as  full 
of  Provincials  as  Rocky  Ford;  Regent  Street  as  Barset- 
shire.  Yet,  though  the  census  may  mark  him  down  as  the 
inhabitant  of  a  metropolis,  the  Provincial  is  never  con- 
scious of  the  variety,  the  cosmopolitanism  which  makes 
the  great  city  to  some  extent  a  miniature  of  the  whole 
world.  Though  he  moves  in  the  very  thickest  of  life, 
he  is  always  surrounded  by  a  self-built  fortification  of 
traditions  and  prejudices,  and  nothing  short  of  a  French 


QUESTIONS  OF  USAGE  65 

Revolution  or  a  Day  of  Judgment  can  make  him  look  over 
his  wall  at  anything  beyond.  Hence,  no  matter  what  his 
geographical  position,  in  spirit  the  Provincial  always  does 
live  in  a  village,  and  it  is  his  conviction  that  this  tiny 
spot  is  the  center  of  the  universe  about  which  the  planets 
and  the  constellations  revolve,  that  here  are  concentrated 
all  the  good  things  of  creation,  leaving  for  the  other  places 
in  the  world  nothing  but  the  bad." 

Now,  the  thing  that  this  happily  enforces  is  the  fact  that 
there  are  more  ways  of  being  correct  than  yours  or  mine. 
The  important  thing  is  that  we  should  evince  a  reasonable 
degree  of  acquaintance  with  the  forms  of  speech  of  culti- 
vated people,  should  show  a  courteous  desire  to  conform  to 
the  tone  of  those  about  us,  and  should  exhibit  some  taste 
and  discrimination  in  the  exercise  of  our  own  judgments. 
Being  tied  to  hard-and-fast  rules  beyond  that,  believing 
that  these  rules  are  hard-and-fast,  is  being  at  once  provin- 
cial and  absurd.  Briefly,  it  should  be  said  that  we  should 
observe  the  laws  of  usage,  but  that  we  should  also  not 
write  or  talk  in  "  school-ma'am  English." 

46.  It  must  be  kept  in  mind  always  that  language  is 
continually  changing.  The  words  fine,  nice,  awful,  dandy, 
for  instance,  have  been  degraded  so  rapidly  of  late  that 
they  are  very  doubtfully  of  use  for  anyone  who  wishes  to 
be  understood.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  oppose  our- 
selves to  this  change  or  any  other.  We  can  stop  using 
the  words.  We  cannot  restore  them  by  using  them  cor- 
rectly. It  is  so  with  other  changes,  and  consequently 
the  laws  of  usage  are  not  and  cannot  be  absolute.  At 
any  rate,  even  if  they  were  much  less  changeable  than 
they  are,  any  usage  in  any  particular  case  is  not  neces- 
sarily the  only  correct  usage.  I  must  be  careful  that  I 
am  not  condemning  as  provincial  that  which  is  merely  eclec- 
tic, that  I  am  not  myself  provincial  in  my  condemnation. 


66  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

47.  In  a  way,  the  whole  matter  of  usage  is  a  matter 
of  form.  A  keen  sense  of  form  is  a  requisite  for  every 
writer  who  expects  to  write  well,  but  in  the  non-creative 
intelligence  form  easily  falls  into  formalism.  Great  construc- 
tive work,  whether  in  literature  or  in  statesmanship  or  in 
anything  else  worth  while,  is  not  achieved  by  formalists. 
They  can  be  no  more  than  the  echoes  of  those  who  created 
the  form  to  which  they  blindly  adhere,  not  seeing  in  it 
the  beauty  and  the  grace  that  first  gave  it  life,  but  accept- 
ing it  simply  as  a  thing  that  is  and  that  so  has  the 
authority  of  the  established  order.  The  genuine  lover  of 
form,  on  the  contrary,  is  seldom  willing  to  believe  that 
all  beautiful  forms  have  been  discovered  or  created.  He 
wishes  always  to  experiment,  hoping  to  evolve  some  new 
charm,  some  fresh  romance,  some  happier  union  of  various 
sounds,  of  shape  and  color,  of  thought  and  word.  As 
a  lover  of  form,  however,  he  recognizes  that  some  things 
are  inherently  ugly,  that  the  world's  judgment  with  re- 
gard to  them  is  final,  and  that  it  must  be  left  undisturbed. 
He  feels  that  to  say,  "  What  do  you  know  about  that?" 
at  every,  or,  indeed,  any  unexpected  turn  of  events  is 
inane  as  well  as  ugly,  and  he  is  not  willing  to  let  a  half- 
dozen  words  advertise  him  as  lacking  at  once  in  taste 
and  intelligence.  It  is  because  it  is  both  inane  and  ugly 
that  sensible  people  avoid  slang.  A  part  of  its  ugliness  and 
of  its  inanity  is  in  its  being  hackneyed.  Lord  Chester- 
field's condemnation  of  common  proverbs  is  rooted  in  the 
same  reason.  It  is  a  social  and  personal  reason  solely, 
not  linguistic  or  academic.  If  we  have  nothing  to  say 
for  ourselves,  if  we  cannot  invent  phrases  of  our  own,  we 
may  make  our  friends  just  as  happy  by  saying  nothing 
as  by  repeating  phrases  that  have  become  the  worn  coin 
of  dull  and  vacant  minds. 

Just  what  shall  be  the  basis  for  decision  in  matters  of 


QUESTIONS  OF  USAGE  67 

usage  cannot  be  briefly  declared.  You  should  be  thoroughly 
familiar  with  the  dictionary,  but  you  should  not  make  it 
a  fetish.  The  writer  who  depends  upon  his  knowledge  of 
the  lexicon  for  his  knowledge  of  the  language  is  in  a  poor 
way  indeed.  With  that  sole  guidance,  he  is  liable  to  all 
sorts  of  mishaps.  The  dictionary  is  one  of  the  best  of 
guides,  to  be  sure,  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  it  cannot  point 
out  all  the  language  roads.  What  will  you  do,  for  instance, 
when  authorities  differ?  A  case  in  point  is  the  use  of 
"  somebody's  else "  or  "  somebody  else's."  This  is  an 
awkward  question,  because,  whichever  you  use,  you  will 
offend  someone.  Since  both  forms  have  substantial  rea- 
sons in  their  support,  there  is  only  one  rational  course 
to  pursue.  Suit  your  own  taste  and  let  the  authorities  and 
those  who  bother  their  heads  about  them  think  what  they 
please.  Again,  there  is  the  case  of  the  split  infinitive.  This 
is  different.  The  use  of  the  infinitive  that  is  not  split 
offends  no  one.  The  use  of  the  split  infinitive  probably 
offends  the  majority  of  cultivated  readers.  There  is  no 
appreciable  necessity  for  or  advantage  in  splitting  infinitives. 
It  is  the  simplest  and  most  natural  thing,  therefore,  not 
to  split  infinitives  and  so  to  avoid  the  censure  of  those 
who  disapprove  of  them. 

48.  If  there  is  any  law  in  the  wide  field  of  the  unsettled, 
it  is  this  law  of  discretion.  It  has  its  foundation  in  the 
law  of  economy  of  attention.  Do  not  let  your  reader  raise 
the  question  of  your  being  in  the  wrong  or  not,  if  you  can 
help  it.  At  the  same  time,  do  not  feel  that  you  must 
always  be  correct.  It  is  impossible  for  anyone  to  be  so, 
except  as  he  shuts  himself  up  within  a  little  world  where 
he  and  his  kind  make  all  the  rules.  It  will  be  a  very 
lonely  world  and  an  intensely  provincial  world  in  due  time. 
By  and  by,  too,  it  will  be  a  moss-grown  and  a  decaying 
and  a  depopulated  world,  and  it  will  be  quite  useless  to 


68  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

write  in  it  or  sing  in  it  or  make  laws  in  it  or  do  anything 
else  in  it,  because  there  will  be  no  one  to  listen  or  clap 
the  hands. 

49.  It  may  be  interesting  to  bring  to  mind  a  number  of 
forms  in  which  a  writer  is  free  to  exercise  his  own  taste. 
Authorities  disagree  in  regard  to  them,  and  so  it  is  per- 
missible to  write  "  first  four,"  logically  preferable,  or  "  four 
first/'  "  Dickens' "  or  "  Dickens's,"  and  to  pronounce 
"  either "  with  the  sound  of  long  e  or  of  long  i.  There 
are  other  variant  forms  of  which  one  is  fairly  to  be  held 
as  having  better  authority  and  more  established  use  than 
the  other,  although  that  other  is  not  to  be  ruled  out  of  court. 
It  is  more  acceptable  to  say  "  hadn't  better  "  than  "  wouldn't 
better,"  because  the  first  has  the  advantage  of  a  longer 
usage  and  is  more  a  part  of  the  idiom  of  English  speech. 

I  can  remember,  in  my  early  college  days,  a  member  of 
my  literary  society  who  found  frequent  occasion  to  pro- 
test vigorously  against  the  use  of  the  expression  "  leave 
the  floor."  His  condemnation  was  on  grounds  of  literal  in- 
accuracy, not  on  grounds  of  taste.  He  insisted  that  of 
course  the  speaker  in  retiring  did  not  take  the  floor  with 
him,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact  and  experience,  that  seems 
unquestionable.  Nevertheless  his  reasoning  from  the  fact 
was  not  conclusive.  Language  is  and  should  be  flexible.  It 
reflects  and  should  reflect  the  play  of  the  mind,  its  give 
and  take,  its  twists  and  turns,  as  well  as  its  arrow  flight 
to  the  truth.  It  must  not  be  too  much  the  instrument  of 
a  hard  logic  or  the  mode  of  an  impeccable  grammatical 
form.  In  general  it  is  better,  no  doubt,  to  follow  logic  and 
grammatical  form  in  the  ordering  of  our  speech,  and  so, 
for  instance,  it  is  better  to  say  "  appropriations  commit- 
tee," because  such  a  committee  has  the  duty  of  dealing 
with  appropriations,  but  the  abstract  idea  involved  gives 
some  warrant  for  the  use  of  "  appropriation  committee," 


QUESTIONS  OF  USAGE  69 

illogical  though  it  is.  It  is  better  to  say  "  It  is  I  "  than 
"  It  is  me,"  but  usage  has  given  some  sanction  to  the 
second  form,  in  spite  of  its  being  ungrammatical.  It  is 
better  to  say  "  as  if "  than  "  as  though,"  because  these 
forms  are  followed  by  conditional  rather  than  concessive 
clauses,  but  usage  has  again  given  some  sanction  to  the 
second  form. 


VIII 

LITERARY  MATERIAL  AND  ITS  TRANS- 
FORMATION 

50.  IN  considering  style,  we  are  dealing  with  form 
and  not  subject-matter.  For  that  reason,  we  may  ignore 
literary  invention,  which  is  the  development  of  ideas  more 
or  less  original,  and  give  attention  to  such  writing  as  has 
its  chief  use  and  function  in  the  organization  and  reshaping 
of  material  to  be  found  in  books  and  other  like  sources. 
In  the  form  in  which  it  is  found,  such  material  may  be 
not  at  all  literary.  It  may  be  hardly  more  than  a  body 
of  facts  that  need  interpretation.  The  first  effort,  then, 
should  be  to  find  in  the  facts  some  ground  for  a  live  personal 
interest.  Any  writing  that  is  to  have  a  good  literary  style 
must  be  written  from  the  standpoint  of  a  wish  to  make  a 
personal  interpretation  of  the  subject.  Literature  is  dis- 
tinguished from  writings  not  literary  by  the  presence  of 
that  personal  attitude  toward  the  subject  on  the  part  of 
the  writer.  In  one  sense,  a  presentation  of  facts  simply 
as  facts  can  have  no  style.  The  things  told  by  a  writer 
who  wishes  to  give  his  writing  style  must  be  told  as 
felt,  viewed,  believed,  cared  for  by  the  author  as  having 
a  peculiar  significance  for  him,  a  significance  that  he  is 
concerned  to  bring  home  to  his  readers. 

The  difficulty  of  taking  material  from  the  writings  and 
reports  of  others  and  so  transforming  it  that  it  becomes 
our  own  is  a  very  serious  one,  but  it  is  one  that  almost 
everyone  has  to  reckon  with.  Few  will  have  call  to 
engage  in  the  finer  processes  of  literary  creation,  but  skill 

70 


LITERARY  MATERIAL  AND  ITS  TRANSFORMATION        71 

in  this  lower  form  of  literary  craftsmanship  is  expected 
of  almost  everyone.  Let  it  be  borne  in  mind,  then,  that 
the  first  step  in  the  process  is  that  of  making  the  material 
that  one  must  consult  in  books  thoroughly  one's  own,  and 
that  the  next  process  is  that  of  establishing  in  one's  own 
mind  an  individual  understanding,  an  individual  conclu- 
sion and  belief  about  the  subject.  For  instance,  was  Napo- 
leon a  great  man  or  a  mean  man?  How  does  what  you 
have  been  able  to  learn  about  him  affect  you,  and  why 
should  someone  else  feel  in  that  way  about  him?  Let 
the  writer  ask  himself  such  questions,  and  soon  the  way 
before  him  will  be  clear.  Otherwise  he  may  get  into  the 
encyclopedia  manner  or  the  scientific  manner  or  the  chron- 
icle manner,  and  then  no  one  will  care  to  read  what  he 
has  written. 

51.  It  is  one  of  the  great  virtues  of  our  college  debating 
societies  that  they  give  students  vigorous  exercise  in  the 
business  of  supporting  a  point  of  view.  It  is  sometimes 
rather  remarkable  the  amount  of  fairly  substantial  reasons 
a  comparatively  commonplace  young  man  will  discover  in 
defense  of  the  proposition  that  an  income  tax  is  or  is  not 
a  very  valuable  bit  of  government  machinery.  There  is  a 
quite  simple  reason  for  that  resourcefulness.  By  the  terms 
of  the  proposition  stated  as  an  affirmation  and  by  his  ac- 
ceptance or  rejection  of  that  affirmation,  the  young  man 
has  put  himself  into  definite  relations  to  it.  That  clarifies 
his  thinking  and  gives  his  ideas  a  road  to  travel. 

It  is  always  a  writer's  first  business  to  find  what  is, 
for  him,  the  strongest  interest  in  a  subject.  He  should 
ask  what  in  it  arouses  his  sympathies  or  antipathies,  and 
why.  Then  he  should  think  not  so  much  of  writing  as 
of  making  others  have  his  interest  and  his  feeling.  Achiev- 
ing that  interest  for  himself  and  communicating  it  is,  after 
all,  the  whole  secret  of  style,  when  one  has  freed  himself 


72  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

from  the  difficulty  of  using  his  instrument,  language.  A 
genuine  enthusiasm  for  the  subject  will  lessen  that  diffi- 
culty very  materially.  The  student  should  remember  that 
he  is  not  writing  at  all  when  he  is  copying  or  imitating 
the  words  of  someone  else.  He  has  no  excuse  as  an  intel- 
ligent human  being  for  thinking  just  what  some  one  else 
has  thought  about  any  subject  not  rigorously  scientific,  and 
only  thinking  what  someone  else  has  thought  justifies  the 
use  of  the  same  language  in  the  expression  of  ideas. 

52.  The  student  theme  that  follows  illustrates  very  well 
the  strength  that  comes  from  concentration  on  a  single 
point  of  view. 

"  THE  CHALLENGE 

"  To  Florence's  cunning  intriguers,  her  thievish  rogues 
and  smiling  villains,  her  debauched  and  vicious  revelers 
gracing  the  courts  of  the  tyrant  Medici,  Savonarola  issued 
a  challenge — a  challenge  thrilling  against  despotism,  against 
luxury,  against  the  '  stagnation  of  godless  and  thankless 
acquiescence.'  To  the  very  heart  of  sin  he  struck  for 
austerity  and  purification.  His  revelation  of  life's  simplici- 
ties to  which  they  had  long  been  blind  startled  the  Floren- 
tines from  their  vulgar  jests  and  lewd  pictures,  their  stolen 
jewels  and  drugged  wines,  and  their  alluring  paramours 
— yes,  startled  even  the  libertines  of  Florence.  For  to  them 
Savonarola  preached  that  clear  manliness  which  is  as  '  nec- 
essary for  happiness  as  for  holiness/  as  necessary  for  the 
lover  as  for  the  saint.  Clearly  he  called  them  to  the 
dignity  of  everyday  life." 

This  is  unified  by  the  writer's  feeling  for  Savonarola, 
and  it  drives  that  feeling  home.  Clearly,  too,  it  does  so, 
not  simply  by  saying  what  the  writer  wishes  to  say,  but 
by  saying  it  well.  That  is,  it  has  a  fitting  style.  The 
following  is  also  a  student  theme,  but  it  is  less  suc- 
cessful. 


LITERARY  MATERIAL  AND  ITS  TRANSFORMATION        73 

"  ToUSSAINT  L'OUVERTURE 

"  Is  there  much  wonder  that  Wendell  Phillips  should  grow 
famous  by  the  lecture  that  put  this  negro  among  the  fore- 
most of  the  men  we  should  pride?  He  was  not  afraid  to 
argue  that  in  him  we  find  the  proof  of  the  equality,  if  not 
the  superiority,  of  the  black  man  with  the  white.  He  put 
the  black  general  against  the  white ;  people  saw  that  the 
negro  was  not  the  fiend  of  cruelty  and  brutality.  They 
had  not  known  of  the  beautiful  purity  of  his  personal 
life,  his  tenderness  and  kindliness.  There  were  tears  for 
the  story  of  his  last  miserable  days.  Perhaps  when  the 
lecture  was  done  there  was  less  to  be  said  of  the  great- 
ness of  Napoleon.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  we've  much  thanks 
for  Mr.  Phillips  and  a  heart  full  of  admiration  for  L'Ouver- 
ture." 

The  faults  of  this  paper  may  be  gathered  in  part  from 
the  student  criticism  below,  given  without  change  from 
the  student's  paper. 

"  This  theme  talks  as  much  about  Phillips'  lecture  as  it 
does  about  L'Ouverture.  There  are  many  minor  mistakes 
in  it.  The  expression  '  men  we  should  pride/  is  poor.  '  This 
negro '  has  no  name  to  refer  back  to,  L'Ouverture  not 
being  mentioned  until  the  last  line.  *  He  was  not  afraid 
to  argue  that  in  him'  has  indefinite  antecedents,  but  is 
fairly  clear.  '  The  equality,  if  not  the  superiority,  of  the 
black  with  the  white,'  has  a  poor  preposition,  as  one  that 
went  with  superiority  would  be  better.  '  Saw  that  the 
negro,'  has  a  reference  general  rather  than  specific.  Fur- 
thermore, the  first  half  of  the  second  sentence  is  not  in 
thought  connected  with  the  second,  while  the  second  part 
of  that  third  sentence  would  go  pretty  well  with  the  third 
sentence.  '  We've,'  should  be  we  have,  for  the  tone  of 
the  rest  of  the  theme.  '  Much  thanks/  should  be  many 
thanks.  '  Heart  full  of  admiration  '  would  better  have  been 
an  emotional  term  following  '  heart.'  In  all  these  things 
the  writer  has  been  quite  careless.  The  style  is  jagged. 
Our  wonder  about  Phillips'  getting  famous  is  incongruous 


74  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

with  the  fact  that  Phillips  was  not  afraid  to  argue.  There 
is  parallelism  in  thought  in  this  theme,  but  the  form  is 
poor  because  it  does  not  bring  out  one  thing,  it  does  not 
bring  out  different  phases  of  one  thing,  and  it  does  not 
progress.  The  point  of  the  paragraph,  that  Phillips  makes 
us  admire  L'Ouverture,  is  lost  throughout  the  center.  The 
diction  is  poor  in  that  it  does  not  bring  pictures  to  the 
mind.  It  is  abstract." 

The  general  drift  of  this  criticism  is  in  the  way  of 
pointing  out  a  lack  of  unity  in  the  paper.  The  writer  has 
not  sufficiently  centered  attention  on  either  L'Ouverture  or 
Phillips.  One  or  the  other  must  be  subordinated.  Either 
one  is  interesting  enough  for  a  theme.  Indeed,  the  ma- 
terial offered  by  one  alone  is  more  than  abundant  for  a 
theme  much  longer  than  this,  but  the  writer  should  not 
attempt  to  exalt  both  of  them,  except  as  one  of  them  shares 
in  an  entirely  subordinate  way  in  the  glorification  of  the 
other. 

53.  If  we  look  at  it  a  little  closely  we  shall  see  that 
the  question  of  form  is,  in  this  paper,  nearly  related  to 
the  question  of  what  I  shall  call  the  writer's  objective. 
In  this  student's  theme  the  objective  is  a  divided  one,  and 
the  style  consequently  is  diffuse  and  scattered.  An  experi- 
enced writer  feels  all  the  while  that  he  is  pushing  toward 
something.  He  has  an  end  before  him  just  as  clearly  as 
the  sculptor  has  before  him  the  imagined  figure  that  will 
be  left  when  he  has  cut  away  the  marble.  If  he  is  as 
deeply  bent  upon  this  objective  as  he  should  be,  he  is 
impatient  of  anything  that  keeps  him  back  from  it.  Every 
word  must  count.  There  must  be  no  turning  aside,  no  con- 
fusion of  aims,  no  change  of  attitude  either  in  fact  or  in 
appearance.  There  will  be  complications  of  the  subject 
through  which  the  discussion  must  be  carried,  but  the  course 
must  not  be  or  seem  circuitous.  All  the  relationships  of 


LITERARY  MATERIAL  AND  ITS  TRANSFORMATION        75 

the  ideas  must  be  so  flashed  up  into  the  light  that  all  the 
minor  notions  will  seem  clearly  tied  to  the  main  thread 
of  thought. 

Now,  this  mood  and  this  spirit,  this  feeling  for  the  goal, 
this  urgency  toward  an  objective  has  an  influence  upon 
the  structure,  the  organization  of  the  thought,  and  also  upon 
the  form  given  it  in  words.  In  general  literature  has  been 
considered  as  being  subject-matter  and  form.  It  is  more 
accurate  to  think  of  it  as  subject-matter,  structure,  and 
style.  When  one  is  in  the  creative  mood,  looking  at  the 
objective  of  his  writing  and  trying  to  focus  every  word 
and  phrase  upon  it,  these  are  all  seen  to  be  in  a  very 
close  mutual  relationship.  Often  the  thought  is  a  part  of 
the  form,  either  as  structure  or  style  or  both,  because  what 
the  writer  wishes  to  communicate  is  a  tone  as  well  as  a 
truth.  It  is  the  style  of  the  writing  that  will  be  most 
important  in  establishing  this  tone.  Thought,  then,  is 
itself  not  complete  until  it  has  been  given  an  adequate 
form,  until  it  has  achieved  actuality  in  style. 

54.  Evidently  style,  good  style,  is  not  one  thing,  but 
many.  It  must  be  considered  always  with  relation  to 
thought  and  structure  and  must  change  with  them.  If  the 
thought  is  sharp  and  definite  and  the  structure  rigid, 
the  style  cannot  appropriately  be  whimsical  and  capricious. 
When  we  are  discussing  a  writer's  style  or  deliberating  upon 
our  own,  we  must  not  confuse  it  with  structure  or  art 
method  or  subject-matter,  and  yet  we  must  not  think  of 
it  as  a  thing  wholly  independent.  It  is  not  the  tissue 
paper  wrapped  around  the  orange,  but  the  deep  gold  of 
the  orange  itself  kept  moist  and  sweet  by  the  juice  in- 
side. 

Some  study  of  structure,  therefore,  cannot  be  quite  omit- 
ted in  the  study  of  style.  We  shall  have  to  look  a  little 
at  the  rigidity  or  looseness  of  structure  of  what  we  read. 


76  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

We  shall  have  to  ask  whether  the  method  of  approach 
to  the  prime  idea  of  the  writing  is  gradual  or  abrupt, 
whether  the  idea  is  brought  forward  slowly  as  the  grounds 
for  it  appear  or  is  first  clearly  announced  and  then 
substantiated,  whether  the  method  is  inductive  or  deductive. 
It  will  sometimes  be  necessary  to  ask  whether  the  author 
presents  his  ideas  by  implication  or  by  declaration,  whether 
the  writing  belongs  to  the  literature  of  suggestion  or  to 
that  of  full  statement.  It  will  be  well  to  know  what  our 
author's  objective  is,  understanding  that  as  being  generally 
something  more  than  meaning,  and  to  know  also  how  he 
brings  his  writing  forward  to  that  objective.  Then  we 
can  see  the  better  how  style  plays  its  part  in  the  whole, 
bringing  the  reader's  passions  and  will  and  intellect  to 
one  full  unity  of  realization. 


IX 

KNOWING  HOW  AND  GETTING  THE  TOUCH 

55.  HOWEVER  well  we  may  know  how  a  thing  should 
be  done,  we  can  gain  facility  in  the  doing  only  by  long 
and  intimate  acquaintance  of  some  sort  with  the  actual 
process  of  doing.  We  may  see  how  others  have  done, 
going  over  the  ground  after  them,  and  we  may  try  the 
doing  for  ourselves.  Practically,  if  we  wish  to  carry  our 
practice  of  the  literary  art,  or  any  other,  as  far  as  we 
can,  we  should  do  both.  That  was  Stevenson's  way,  as 
we  have  seen.  It  was  also  the  method  of  so  eminently 
practical  a  man  as  .Benjamin  Franklin,  as  he  has  recorded 
with  quite  sufficient  clearness.  In  fact,  it  seems  almost 
self-evident  that  the  easiest  road  to  achievement  in  any 
kind  of  effort  is  through  acquaintance  with  the  experience 
of  others.  There  is  no  doubt  a  great  deal  of  drudgery 
in  following  patiently  the  details  of  style  in  any  writer. 
So  there  is  drudgery  in  mastering  the  technique  of  any 
art.  It  is  drudgery  sitting  for  hours  before  a  piano- 
strumming  dull  exercises.  It  is  drudgery  doing  a  like  thing 
in  front  of  an  easel.  It  is  drudgery  listening  to  the  click 
of  a  telegraph  key  and  learning  to  turn  it  into  words. 
It  is  impossible  to  do  anything  well  without  going  through 
an  apprenticeship  of  drudgery.  It  is  so  that  we  acquire  the 
right  touch,  that  we  become  at  last  sure  and  unfaltering, 
that  we  do  what  we  do  with  ease. 

The  writers  from  whom  material  has  been  taken  for 
the  following  pages  are  all  of  them  masters  of  highly 

77 


78  THE  MECHANIC  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

developed  styles.  At  the  same  time,  ^heir_.styles_arejex- 
tremely  various.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  standard 
style.  There  is  no  law  for  writing  and  writing  uniformly 
well.  What  is  uniform  and  a  matter  of  law  is  the  relation 
between  particular  ways  of  saying  things  and  impres- 
sions that  things  so  said  will  convey  to  readers.  We 
can  acquaint  ourselves  with  these  things  until  we  work 
through  them  with  an  almost  instinctive  ease,  like  that  of 
the  player  who  strikes  the  rigHt  key'witKout  stopping  to 
think  exactly  where  it  is  on  the  keyboard.  Then  we  can 
be  ourselves  in  the  written  word,  saying  what  we  please 
with  what  effect  we  please.  The  comparatively  enormous 
amount  of  good  writing  that  we  have  to-day  is  probably 
due  to  the  familiarity  with  models  of  those  trying  to  write, 
undoubtedly  much  greater  now  than  at  any  other  period 
since  men  began  to  put  down  their  thoughts  in  written 
symbols. 

56.  The  following  questions  are  meant  to  aid  in  the  study 
of  the  writings  that  make  up  the  body  of  the  book.  They 
are  to  be  considered  again  and  again  in  connection  with 
those  lines,  sentences,  or  paragraphs  to  which  they  are  ap- 
plied by  the  numbers  that  are  given  at  the  bottom  of  each 
page  farther  on.  How  these  numbers  as  so  applied  are 
to  be  understood  will  readily  appear  from  an  example. 
For  instance,  4,  2O-5,  5  :  n,  g,  k  would  mean  that  ques- 
tions lettered  n,  g,  and  k  should  be  answered  for  the  lines 
from  twenty  on  page  four  to  five  on  page  five,  inclusive. 
The  number  immediately  preceding  the  dash  is  always  the 
line  number.  The  page  number  is  separated  from  the  line 
number  by  a  comma.  When  there  is  no  change  of  page,  the 
page  number  is  omitted,  as  also  whenever  it  may  seem 
unnecessary.  The  letters  following  the  colon  indicate  the 
questions  to  be  answered.  Following  some  of  the  questions 
there  are  references  to  the  sections  of  the  text  in  which 


KNOWING  How  AND  GETTING  THE  TOUCH          79 

there  may  be  found  some  discussion  of  the  subject  with 
which  that  question  deals. 


STUDY  QUESTIONS 

a.  What  are  the  connotative  words  in  these  sentences  ?    Are  they 
given  positions  of  emphasis  in  the  sentence?    §§  n,  12,  13,  28,  29. 

b.  Is  there  any  special  reason  why  this  sentence,  or  paragraph, 
should  be  short  or  long?    §§22,  23. 

c.  Where  do  you  find  parallelism?    Does  it  emphasize  one  thing, 
set  off  one  thing  against  another  antithetically,  increase  the   im- 
pression of  unity,  of  variety  in  unity,  or  of  opposition?    §§  15,  18, 
25,  26. 

d.  Is  this  analytical,  explanatory,  or  emotional  in  its  general  tone  ? 
How  is  the  sentence  structure  in  accord  with  this  character? 

e.  What  is  figurative  here,  and  how  is  the  figure  good  or  not? 
Is  it  illustrative  and  clarifying  or  intensifying  and  expansive,  that 
is,  does  it  make  meaning  clearer,  or  does  it  make  it  more  vivid  and 
compelling  ?    §§  33,  34. 

/.   Do  you  find  climax  or  the  opposite  here?    For  what  purpose? 

g.  What  sentence  or  paragraph  of  transition  here,  or  is  connec- 
tion of  thought  obscure  ? 

h.  What  in  the  employment  of  the  concrete  and  particular,  the 
abstract,  the  simple  and  familiar,  or  the  strange  and  suggestive  do 
you  notice  here?  Does  it  heighten  feeling,  simplify  meaning,  in- 
crease complexity  of  thought,  stimulate  attention,  or  strain  it? 

«.  Is  this  sentence  loose,  periodic,  or  balanced?  To  what 
rhetorical  end?  §24. 

j.  Is  the  thought  connection  here  close  or  abrupt?  If  close,  does 
it  properly  strengthen  coherence,  or  strain  attention  by  too  much 
suspense?  If  abrupt,  does  it  disorganize  the  thought,  or  stimulate 
attention  ?  §§  24,  27. 

k.  Has  this  paragraph  a  definite  topic  sentence,  and  do  the  other 
sentences  follow  in  logical  order  and  with  logical  relation  to  the 
topic  sentence? 

/.  What  word  is  here  used  in  a  peculiar  way,  or  what  peculiarity 
of  phrasing  is  there  here?  Would  you  justify  it? 

m.  What  words  not  formally  words  of  connection  serve  here  to 
establish  relation  between  sentences  ?  §  27. 

n.  Does  this  paragraph,  or  sentence,  have  a  proper  cadence  at 
the  close,  or  not  ?  §  38. 

o.  What  words  are  stressed  here?  Are  they  wholly  connotative 
words,  or  are  there  verbals  among  them,  articulating  words,  and 
other  words  of  less  importance? 


8o  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

p.  What  do  you  notice  in  the  predication  here?  How  does  the 
effect  justify  it  or  not? 

q.  What  repetition  or  apposition,  or  what  multiplication  of  words 
do  you  find  here?  What  is  the  effect,  verbosity,  or  strength,  or 
emphasis  ? 

r.  What  inversion  or  transposition  is  there  here,  and  what  is  the 
effect? 

s.  What  that  is  either  harmonious  or  inharmonious  in  idea, 
sound,  or  turn  of  phrase  do  you  find  here?  What  is  the  effect? 

t.  What  play  upon  sound  do  you  find  here,  and  how  does  it 
harmonize  with  or  accentuate  the  meaning?  §38. 

u.  Indicate  the  rhythmic  breaks  through  this.  Do  they  give  a 
regular  or  irregular  movement  to  the  writing?  How  sharply  ac- 
centuated are  they,  and  do  they  heighten  or  lessen  emphasis?  Is 
the  movement  slow  or  rapid?  §§  35,  36,  37. 

v.  How  is  the  movement  of  thought  within  the  sentence  here,  or 
from  sentence  to  sentence,  logically  progressive,  formally  gram- 
matical, or  emotionally  associative  and  reiterant?  Is  there  in  the 
sentence  structure  or  ordering  of  the  words  any  management  of 
emphasis  in  agreement  with  this?  §§20-27. 

w.  What  use  of  terms  or  turn  of  phrase  here  is  whimsical  or 
humorous  or  indicative  of  some  other  spirit  not  in  the  direct  move- 
ment of  the  thought?  §32. 

x.  What  here,  in  phrasing  or  ordering  of  words,  gives  emphasis 
and  point  to  the  writing,  and  what  is  emphasized?  Is  the  emphasis 
that  of  animation  and  movement,  of  deliberation  and  weight,  or  of 
something  between  these  qualities?  Is  it  cumulative  or  antithetical? 
§§  11,  12,  13,  14,  15,  16,  22. 

The  preceding  questions  are  for  use  in  the  detailed 
study  of  the  style  of  the  various  writers  whose  work  ap- 
pears, by  example,  in  the  following  pages.  For  the  study 
of  the  selections  as  a  whole,  other  questions  are  provided 
below.  It  will  be  seen  that  they  ask  for  some  conclusions 
and  generalizations  regarding  the  styles  of  the  writers,  in 
addition  to  the  study  of  the  organization  of  the  selections. 
At  the  discretion  of  the  instructor,  they  should  be  answered, 
all  or  part  of  them,  with  relation  to  each  of  the  selections 
studied,  as  indicated  by  the  numbers  following  each  selec- 
tion. 


KNOWING  How  AND  GETTING  THE  TOUCH          81 


GENERAL  QUESTIONS  ON  STRUCTURE 

1.  What  is  the  objective  in  this  writing?    §53. 

2.  At  what  point  does  the  general  idea  of  the  writing  first  appear? 

3.  Are  there  subordinate  ideas  upon  which  the  main  idea  depends  ? 
If  so,  what  are  they,  and  are  they  brought  forward  before  or  after 
the  main  statement? 

4.  Write    sentences    expressing   the    principal    thought   of    each 
paragraph,  one  sentence   for  each,  and  show,  through  these  sen- 
tences, how  there  is  or  is  not  a  progressive  development  of  the 
thought. 

5.  Determine  whether  there  are  any  paragraphs  or  portions  of 
paragraphs   that  seem  in  any  way  not  sufficiently   related  to  the 
main  idea,  indicating  them. 

6.  Is  the  organization  of  the  essay  loose  and  wandering,  or  firm 
and  rigid? 

7.  Would  you  say  that  this  writing,  in  general  tone  and  method 
of  treatment,  is  preponderantly  personal  or  impersonal? 

8.  Determine  the  number  of  connotative  words,  of  articulating 
words,  and  of  verbals  in  the  total  of  words  that  are  important 
or  that  are  stressed  on  any  given  page.     (Different  pages  should 
be  assigned  different  members  of  the  class  and  the  average  of  their 
results  taken.)     Does  the  result  indicate,  as   far  as  it  goes,  that 
the  style  is  characterized  the  more  by  imaginative  appeal,  by  inten- 
sity and  energy  of  statement,  by  movement  and  action,  or  by  the 
absence  of  emotional  qualities?     Compare  with  your  results   for 
other  writers. 

9.  How  is  the  style  of  this  writing  marked  by  a  close  relation 
of  sentences  or  by  abruptness  of  transitions?    How  does  that  affect 
the  movement  of  thought  and  its  appeal  to  your  interests? 

10.  How  are  your  answers  to  questions  eight  and  nine  in  agree- 
ment or   disagreement   with   your   answers   to   questions   six   and 
seven  ? 

11.  What  qualities  of  style  do  you  find  in  this,  and  how  are  they 
resultant  from  the  diction,  the  arrangement  of  sentences,  clauses, 
and  phrases,  the  length  and  the  character  of  sentences,  the  degree 
of  independence,  subordination,  or  other  connection  between  sen- 
tences?    For  the  convenience  of  the  student  there  is  given  below 
a  list  of  terms  that  may  be  applied  to  style,  nouns  as  of  qualities 
that  style  may  possess,  and  adjectives  as  of  qualities  defining  it. 

Nouns:  strength,  energy,  force,  clearness,  animation,  harmony, 
liveliness,  emphasis,  ease,  abandon,  rhythm,  dignity,  euphony. 

Adjectives :  graphic,  abstract,  specific,  concrete,  exact,  imagina- 
tive, bald,  abrupt,  fanciful,  humorous,  whimsical,  capricious,  mas- 
sive, heavy,  insistent,  elegant,  artificial,  forced,  high-flown,  clear, 


82  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

natural,  intimate,  cold,  hard,  gentle,  close-knit,  sweeping,  nervous, 
equable. 

12.  How  does  this  writer's  style  seem  adapted  to  your  own  uses 
and  so  a  style  that  it  would  be  profitable  for  you  to  cultivate  or 
not?    Give  your  reasons. 

13.  How    is    the    subject-matter    of    this,    in    its    first    intention, 
matter-of-fact,    analytical,   expository,    or    argumentative,    or    is    it 
not?     If  it  has  this  more  or  less  impersonal  character,  show  how 
the  author  has,  or  has  not,  found  a  point  of  view  and  achieved  a 
literary  method  and  style  by  which  its  personal  and  human  char- 
acter has  been  heightened.    Does  the  style  have  distinction  or  not? 
If  so,  how? 

14.  Is   the   style   of   this    selection   marked   the   more   by  logical 
coherence,  care  for  accuracy  of  statement,  rapidity  of  movement, 
vividness  of  details,  independence  in  the  presentation  of  those  de- 
tails, or  care  in  subordinating*  and  correlating  them?     How  is  that 
seen  in  the  length  of  sentences,  the  connection  between  sentences, 
the  use  of  loose  or  periodic  sentences,  or  the  arrangement  of  words 
in  the  sentence  for  emphasis?    §§20-27. 


PART  II 
TEXTS 


SIR  PHILIP   SIDNEY 
1554-1586 

THE  STORY  OF  ARGALUS  AND  PARTHENIA 
From  "The  Countess  of  Pembroke's  Arcadia" 

"  MY  Lord,"  said  he,  "  when  our  good  king  Basilius,  with 
better  success  than  expectation,  took  to  wife  (even  in  his 
more  than  decaying  years)  the  fair  young  princess  Gynecia, 
there  came  with  her  a  young  lord,  cousin  german  to  her- 
self, named  Argalus,  led  hither  partly  by  the  love  and  5 
honor  of  his  noble  kinswoman,  partly  with  the  humor  of 
youth,  which  ever  thinks  that  good,  whose  goodness  he  sees 
not.  And  in  this  court  he  received  so  good  an  increase  of 
knowledge,  that  after  some  years  spent,  he  so  manifested 
a  virtuous  mind  in  all  his  actions,  that  Arcadia  gloried  10 
such  a  plant  was  transported  unto  them,  being  a  gentleman 
indeed  most  rarely  accomplished,  excellently  learned,  but 
without  all  vain  glory;  friendly  without  facetiousness ; 
valiant,  so  as  for  my  part  I  think  the  earth  hath  no  man 
that  hath  done  more  heroical  acts  than  he.  My  master's  15 
son  Clitophon  being  a  young  gentleman  as  of  great  birth 
so  truly  of  good  nature  and  one  that  can  see  good  and 
love  it,  haunted  more  the  company  of  this  worthy  Argalus, 
than  of  any  other.  About  two  years  since,  it  so  fell  out 
that  he  brought  him  to  a  great  lady's  house,,  sister  to  my  20 
master,  who  had  with  her  her  only  daughter,  the  fair 
Parthenia,  fair  indeed  (fame,  I  think,  itself  not  daring  to 

5-8  :  c,  q.  8-15  :  c,  i,  j.  19-86,  5  : 1,  o. 
85 


86  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

call  any  fairer,  if  it  be  not  Helena,  Queen  of  Corinth, 
and  the  two  incomparable  sisters  of  Arcadia)  and  that 
which  made  her  fairness  much  the  fairer  was,  that  it  was 
but  a  fair  ambassador  of  a  most  fair  mind,  full  of  wit,  and  a 
5  wit  which  delighted  more  to  judge  itself  than  to  show  itself : 
her  speech  being  as  rare,  as  precious;  her  silence  without 
fullness ;  her  modesty  without  affectation ;  her  shamefaced- 
ness  without  ignorance :  in  sum,  one  that  to  praise  well  one 
must  first  set  down  with  himself  what  it  is  to  be  excellent : 

10  for  so  she  is. 

"  I  think  you  think  that  all  these  perfections  meeting 
could  not  choose  but  find  one  another,  and  delight  in  what 
they  found ;  for  likeness  of  manners  is  likely  in  reason 
to  draw  likeness  of  affection;  men's  actions  do  not  always 

15  cross  with  reason :  to  be  short,  it  did  so  indeed.  They 
loved,  although  for  a  while  the  fire  thereof  (hope's  wings 
being  cut  off)  were  blown  by  the  bellows  of  despair  upon 
this  occasion. 

"  There  had  been  a  good  while  before,  and  so  continued, 

20  a  suitor  to  this  same  lady,  a  great  noble  man,  though  of 
Laconia,  yet  near  neighbor  to  Parthenia's  mother,  named 
Demagoras ;  a  man  mighty  in  riches  and  power,  and  proud 
thereof,  stubbornly  stout,  loving  nobody  but  himself,  and, 
for  his  own  delight's  sake,  Parthenia:  and  pursuing  vehe- 

25  mently  his  desire,  his  riches  had  so  gilded  over  his  other 
imperfections  that  the  old  lady  had  given  her  consent; 
and  using  a  mother's  authority  upon  her  fair  daughter  had 
made  her  yield  thereunto,  not  because  she  liked  her  choice, 
but  because  her  obedient  mind  had  .not  yet  taken  upon  it 

30  to  make  choice.  And  the  day  of  their  assurance  drew  near, 
when  my  young  Lord  Clitophon  brought  this  noble  Argalus, 
perchance  principally  to  see  so  rare  a  sight,  as  Parthenia 
by  all  well- judging  eyes  was  judged. 

6-io:c,  i.   u-is:e,l.   15-18  :  e.  22-24:  c.  24-28 :  c,  i.  29-33:3,0. 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  87 

"  But  though  few  days  were  before  the  time  of  assur- 
ance appointed,  yet  love,  that  saw  he  had  a  great  journey 
to  make  in  short  time,  hasted  so  himself  that  before  her 
word  could  tie  her  to  Demagoras,  her  heart  had  vowed  her 
to  Argalus  with  so  grateful  a  receipt  of  mutual  affection  5 
that  if  she  desired  above  all  things  to  have  Argalus, 
Argalus  feared  nothing  but  to  miss  Parthenia.  And  now 
Parthenia  had  learned  both  liking  and  misliking,  loving 
and  loathing ;  and  out  of  passion  began  ,to  take  the  authority 
of  judgment;  insomuch  that  when  the  time  came  that  De-  10 
magoras  (full  of  proud  joy)  thought  to  receive  the  gift  of 
herself;  she,  with  words  of  refusal  (though  with  tears 
showing  she  was  sorry  she  must  refuse)  assured  her  mother 
that  she  would  first  be  bedded  in  her  grave  than  wedded 
to  Demagoras.  The  change  was  no  more  strange  than  15 
unpleasant  to  the  mother,  who  being  determinately  (lest 
I  should  say  of  a  great  lady,  willfully)  bent  to  marry  her 
to  Demagoras,  tried  all  ways,  which  a  witty  and  hard- 
hearted mother  could  use  upon  so  humble  a  daughter  in 
whom  the  only  resisting  power  was  love.  But  the  more  20 
she  assaulted,  the  more  she  taught  Parthenia  to  defend ;  and 
the  more  Parthenia  defended,  the  more  she  made  her 
mother  obstinate  in  the  assault:  who  at  length  finding  that 
Argalus  standing  between  them,  was  it  that  most  eclipsed 
her  affection  from  shining  on  Demagoras,  she  sought  all  25 
means  to  remove  him,  so  much  the  more  as  he  manifested 
himself  an  unremovable  suitor  to  her  daughter:  first  by 
employing  him  in  as  many  dangerous  enterprises  as  ever 
the  evil  step-mother  Juno  recommended  to  the  famous 
Hercules:  but  the  more  his  virtue  was  tried,  the  more  30 
pure  it  grew,  while  all  the  things  she  did  to  overthrow 
him,  did  set  him  up  upon  the  height  of  honor;  enough 
to  have  moved  her  heart,  especially  to  a  man  every  way 

i-3  :  i,  e.  3-5  :  i.  5-7  :  i.  7-9  :  o.  9-10  :  o.   10-15  :  i,  g.  20-23  :  c.  27-32  :  e. 


88  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

so  worthy  as  Argalus;  but  struggling  against  all  reason, 
because  she  would  have  her  will,  and  shew  her  authority 
in  matching  her  with  Demagoras,  the  more  virtuous  Argalus 
was  the  more  she  hated  him,  thinking  herself  conquered 
5  in  his  conquests,  and  therefore  still  employing  him  in  more 
and  more  dangerous  attempts:  in  the  meanwhile  she  used 
all  the  extremities  possible  upon  her  fair  daughter  to  make 
her  give  over  herself  to  her  direction.  But  it  was  hard 
to  judge  whether  he  in  doing,  or  she  in  suffering,  shewed 

10  greater  constancy  of  affection :  for,  as  to  Argalus  the  world 
sooner  wanted  occasion  than  he  valor  to  go  through  them: 
so  to  Parthenia  malice  sooner  ceased  than  her  unchanged 
patience.  Lastly,  by  treason  Demagoras  and  she  would 
have  made  way  with  Argalus,  but  he  with  providence  and 

15  courage  so  past  over  all  that  the  mother  took  such  a  spite- 
ful grief  at  it  that  her  heart  brake  withal,  and  she  died. 
"  But  then  Demagoras  assuring  himself  that  now  Par- 
thenia was  her  own  she  would  never  be  his,  and  receiving 
as  much  by  her  own  determinate  answer,  not  more  desiring 

20  his  own  happiness,  than  envying  Argalus,  whom  he  saw 
with  narrow  eyes,  even  ready  to  enjoy  the  perfection  of 
his  desires,  strengthening  his  conceit  with  all  the  mis- 
chievous counsels  which  disdained  love  and  envious  pride 
could  give  unto  him,  the  wicked  wretch  (taking  a  time  that 

25  Argalus  was  gone  to  his  country  to  fetch  some  of  his  prin- 
cipal friends  to  honor  the  marriage  which  Parthenia  had 
most  joyfully  consented  unto)  the  wicked  Demagoras,  I 
say,  desiring  to  speak  with  her,  with  unmerciful  force 
(her  weak  arms  in  vain  resisting)  rubbed  all  over  her  face 

30  a  most  horrible  poison :  the  effect  whereof  was  such,  that 
never  leper  looked  more  ugly  than  she  did :  which  done, 
having  his  men  and  horses  ready,  departed  away  in  spite 
of  her  servants,  as  ready  to  revenge  as  could  be,  in  such 

3-6  :  i,  o.  10-13:0.  17-22:0.  17-33  :  j,  i. 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  89 

an  unexpected  mischief.  But  the  abominableness  of  this 
fact  being  come  to  my  Lord  Kalander,  he  made  such  means, 
both  by  our  king's  intercession  and  his  own,  that  by  the 
king  and  senate  of  Lacedaemon,  Demagoras  was,  upon 
pain  of  death,  banished  the  country :  who  hating  the  punish-  5 
ment,  where  he  should  have  hated  the  fault,  joined  him- 
self, with  all  the  power  he  could  make,  unto  the  Helots, 
lately  in  rebellion  against  that  state :  and  they  (glad  to  have 
a  man  of  such  authority  among  them)  made  him  their 
general,  and  under  him  have  committed  divers  the  most  out-  10 
rageous  villanies  that  a  base  multitude  (full  of  desperate 
revenge)  can  imagine. 

"  But  within  a  while  after  this  pitiful  fact  committed  upon 
Parthenia,  Argalus  returned  (poor  Gentleman)  having  her 
fair  image  in  his  heart,  and  already  promising  his  eyes  the  15 
uttermost  of  his  felicity  when  they  (nobody  else  daring  to 
tell  it  him)  were  the  first  messengers  to  themselves  of  their 
own  misfortune.  I  mean  not  to  move  passion  with  telling 
you  the  grief  of  both,  when  he  knew  her,  for  at  first  he 
did  not ;  nor  at  first  knowledge  could  possibly  have  virtue's  20 
aid  so  ready,  as  not  even  weakly  to  lament  the  loss  of 
such  a  jewel,  so  much  the  more,  as  that  skillful  men  in 
that  art  assured  it  was  unrecoverable:  but  within  a  while, 
truth  of  love  (which  still  held  the  first  face  in  his  memory) 
a  virtuous  constancy,  and  even  a  delight  to  be  constant,  25 
faith  given,  and  inward  worthiness  shining  through  the 
foulest  mists,  took  so  full  hold  of  the  noble  Argalus,  that 
not  only  in  such  comfort  which  witty  arguments  may  bestow 
upon  adversity,  but  even  with  the  most  abundant  kind- 
ness that  an  eye-ravished  lover  can  express,  he  labored  30 
both  to  drive  the  extremity  of  sorrow  from  her,  and  to 
hasten  the  celebration  of  their  marriage:  whereunto  he 
shewed  himself  no  less  cheerfully  earnest  than  if  she  had 

5-6  :  o.  13-18  :  e.  18-90,  5  '•  J,  v. 


90  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

never  been  disinherited  of  that  goodly  portion  which  nature 
had  so  liberally  bequeathed  unto  her,  and  for  that  cause 
deferred  his  intended  revenge  upon  Demagoras,  because  he 
might  continually  be  in  her  presence,  shewing  more  humble 
5  serviceableness  and  joy  to  content  her  than  ever  before. 

"  But  as  she  gave  this  rare  example,  not  to  be  hoped 
for  of  any  other,  but  of  another  Argalus,  so  of  the  other 
side,  she  took  as  strange  a  course  in  affection:  for  where 
she  desired  to  enjoy  him  more  than  to  live  yet  did  she  over- 

10  throw  both  her  own  desire  and  his,  and  in  no  sort  would 
yield  to  marry  him :  with  a  strange  encounter  of  love's 
affects  and  effects;  that  he  by  an  affection  sprung  from 
her  excessive  beauty  should  delight  in  horrible  foulness; 
and  she  of  a  vehement  desire  to  have  him  should  kindly 

15  build  a  resolution  never  to  have  him;  for  truth  it  is,  that 
so  in  heart  she  loved  him,  as  she  could  find  in  her  heart 
he  should  be  tied  to  what  was  unworthy  of  his  presence. 

"  Truly,  Sir,  a  very  good  orator  might  have  a  fair 
field  to  use  eloquence  in,  if  he  did  but  only  repeat  the 

20  lamentable,  and  truly  affectionate  speeches,  while  he  con- 
jured her  by  the  remembrance  of  her  affection,  and  true 
oaths  of  his  own  affection,  not  to  make  him  so  unhappy, 
as  to  think  he  had  not  only  lost  her  face,  but  her  heart; 
that  her  face,  when  it  was  fairest,  had  been  but  a  marshal  to 

25  lodge  the  love  of  her  in  his  mind,  which  now  was  so  well 
placed  that  it  needed  no  further  help  of  any  outward  har- 
binger; beseeching  her,  even  with  tears,  to  know  that  his 
love  was  not  so  superficial  as  to  go  no  further  than  the  skin, 
which  yet  now  to  him  was  most  fair  since  it  was  hers :  how 

30  could  he  be  so  ungrateful  as  to  love  her  the  less  for  that 

which  she  had  only  received  for  his  sake;  that  he  never 

beheld  it,  but  therein  he  saw  the  loveliness  of  her  love 

towards  him ;  protesting  unto  her  that  he  would  never  take 

6-1 1 :  u.  11-17:!,  v.  18-27 :  u,  e.  31-91,2:0,!. 


SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  91 

joy  of  his  life  if  he  might  not  enjoy  her,  for  whom  prin- 
cipally he  was  glad  he  had  life.  But  (as  I  heard  by  one 
that  overheard  them)  she  (wringing  him  by  the  hand)  made 
no  other  answer  but  this :  '  My  Lord/  said  she,  '  God 
knows  I  love  you ;  if  I  were  a  princess  of  the  whole  world,  5 
and  had  withal,  all  the  blessings  that  ever  the  world  brought 
forth,  I  should  not  make  delay  to  lay  myself  and  them 
under  your  feet;  or  if  I  had  continued  but  as  I  was, 
though  (I  must  confess)  far  unworthy  of  you,  yet  would 
I  (with  too  great  a  joy  for  my  heart  now  to  think  of)  10 
have  accepted  your  vouchsafing  me  to  be  yours,  and  with 
faith  and  obedience  would  have  supplied  all  other  defects. 
But  first  let  me  be  much  more  miserable  than  I  am  e'er 
I  match  such  an  Argalus  to  such  a  Parthenia.  Live 
happy,  dear  Argalus,  I  give  you  full  liberty,  and  I  beseech  15 
you  to  take  it;  and  I  assure  you  I  shall  rejoice  (whatso- 
ever becomes  of  me)  to  see  you  so  coupled,  as  may  be  both 
fit  for  your  honor  and  satisfaction/  With  that  she  burst 
out  crying  and  weeping,  not  able  longer  to  control  herself 
from  blaming  her  fortune,  and  wishing  her  own  death.  20 

"  But  Argalus,  with  a  most  heavy  heart  still  pursuing 
his  desire,  she  fixed  of  mind  to  avoid  further  entreaty,  and 
to  fly  all  company  which  (even  of  him)  grew  unpleasant 
to  her,  one  night  she  stole  away;  but  whither  as  yet  it  is 
unknown  or  indeed  what  is  become  of  her."  25 

2-4:!.  13, 14:!.  21-25  :c. 

7,9,  n,  12,  13,  I4.1 
1  See  pages  80-82. 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY 
1785-1859 

LEVANA  AND  OUR  LADY  OF  SORROWS 

OFTENTIMES  at  Oxford  I  saw  Levana  in  my  dreams. 
I  knew  her  by  her  Roman  symbols.  Who  is  Levana? 
Reader,  that  do  not  pretend  to  have  leisure  for  very  much 
scholarship,  you  will  not  be  angry  with  me  for  telling  you. 

5  Levana  was  the  Roman  goddess  that  performed  for  the 
newborn  infant  the  earliest  office  of  ennobling  kindness — 
typical,  by  its  mode,  of  that  grandeur  which  belongs  to 
man  everywhere,  and  of  that  benignity  in  powers  invisible, 
which  even  in  Pagan  worlds  sometimes  descends  to  sustain 

10  it.  At  the  very  moment  of  birth,  just  as  the  infant  tasted 
for  the  first  time  the  atmosphere  of  our  troubled  planet, 
it  was  laid  on  the  ground.  That  might  bear  different  inter- 
pretations. But  immediately,  lest  so  grand  a  creature  should 
grovel  there  for  more  than  one  instant,  either  the  paternal 

15  hand,  as  proxy  for  the  goddess  Levana,  or  some  near  kins- 
man, as  proxy  for  the  father,  raised  it  upright,  bade  it  look 
erect  as  the  king  of  all  this  world,  and  presented  its 
forehead  to  the  stars,  saying,  perhaps,  in  his  heart — "  Be- 
hold what  is  greater  than  yourselves !  "  This  symbolic  act 

20  represented  the  function  of  Levana.  And  that  mysterious 
lady,  who  never  revealed  her  face  (except  to  me  in  dreams), 
but  always  acted  by  delegation,  had  her  name  from  the 
Latin  verb  (as  still  it  is  the  Italian  verb)  levare,  to  raise 
aloft. 

i-io:e,  g.  12-24:11,  h,  i. 
92 


THOMAS   DE   QUINCEY  93 

This  is  the  explanation  of  Levana.  And  hence  it  has 
arisen  that  some  people  have  understood  by  Levana  the 
tutelary  power  that  controls  the  education  of  the  nursery. 
She,  that  would  not  suffer  at  his  birth  even  a  prefigurative 
or  mimic  degradation  for  her  awful  ward,  far  less  could  5 
be  supposed  to  suffer  the  real  degradation  attaching  to  the 
non-development  of  his  powers.  She  therefore  watches  over 
human  education.  Now,  the  word  educo,  with  the  penulti- 
mate short,  was  derived  (by  a  process  often  exemplified 
in  the  crystallization  of  languages)  from  the  word  educo,  10 
with  the  penultimate  long.  Whatsoever  educes  or  develops 
— educates.  By  the  education  of  Levana,  therefore,  is  meant 
— not  the  poor  machinery  that  moves  by  spelling-books 
and  grammars,  but  that  mighty  system  of  central  forces 
hidden  in  the  deep  bosom  of  human  life,  which  by  passion,  15 
by  strife,  by  temptation,  by  the  energies  of  resistance, 
works  for  ever  upon  children — resting  not  day  or  night, 
any  more  than  the  mighty  wheel  of  day  and  night  them- 
selves, whose  moments,  like  restless  spokes,  are  glimmer- 
ing for  ever  as  they  revolve.  20 

If,  then,  these  are  the  ministries  by  which  Levana  works, 
how  profoundly  must  she  reverence  the  agencies  of  grief! 
But  you,  reader,  think — that  children  generally  are  not 
liable  to  grief  such  as  mine.  There  are  two  senses  in  the 
word  generally — the  sense  of  Euclid  where  it  means  uni-  25 
versally  (or  in  the  whole  extent  of  the  genus),  and  a  foolish 
sense  of  this  world  where  it  means  usually.  Now  I  am 
far  from  saying  that  children  universally  are  capable  of 
grief  like  mine.  But  there  are  more  than  you  ever  heard 
of,  who  die  of  grief  in  this  island  of  ours.  I  will  tell  30 
you  a  common  case.  The  rules  of  Eton  require  that  a 
boy  on  the  Foundation  should  be  there  twelve  years :  he 
is  superannuated  at  eighteen,  consequently  he  must  come 

1-12  :  u,  h,  i.  12-20  :  c,  h. 


94  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

at  six.  Children  torn  away  from  mothers  and  sisters  at 
that  age  not  unfrequently  die.  I  speak  of  what  I  know. 
The  complaint  is  not  entered  by  the  registrar  as  grief; 
but  that  it  is.  Grief  of  that  sort,  and  at  that  age,  has 

5  killed  more  than  ever  have  been  counted  amongst  its 
martyrs. 

Therefore  it  is  that  Levana  often  communes  with  the 
powers  that  shake  man's  heart:  therefore  it  is  that  she 
dotes  upon  grief.  "  These  ladies,"  said  I  softly  to  myself, 

10  on  seeing  the  ministers  with  whom  Levana  was  conversing, 
"  these  are  the  Sorrows ;  and  they  are  three  in  number, 
as  the  Graces  are  three,  who  dress  man's  life  with  beauty; 
the  Parcae  are  three,  who  weave  the  dark  arras  of  man's 
life  in  their  mysterious  loom  always  with  colors  sad  in 

15  part,  sometimes  angry  with  tragic  crimson  and  black ; 
the  Furies  are  three,  who  visit  with  retributions  called 
from  the  other  side  of  the  grave  offenses  that  walk  upon 
this;  and  once  even  the  Muses  were  but  three,  who  fit 
the  harp,  the  trumpet,  or  the  lute,  to  the  great  burdens 

20  of  man's  impassioned  creations.  These  are  the  Sorrows, 
all  three  of  whom  I  know."  The  last  words  I  say  now; 
but  in  Oxford  I  said — "  one  of  whom  I  know,  and  the 
others  too  surely  I  shall  know."  For  already,  in  my  fervent 
youth,  I  saw  (dimly  relieved  upon  the  dark  background 

25  of   my   dreams)    the   imperfect   lineaments   of   the   awful 

sisters.     These  sisters — by  what  name  shall  we  call  them? 

If  I  say  simply — "  The  Sorrows,"  there  will  be  a  chance 

of  mistaking  the  term ;  it  might  be  understood  of  individual 

sorrow — separate  cases  of  sorrow, — whereas  I  want  a  term 

30  expressing  the  mighty  abstractions  that  incarnate  themselves 

in   all  individual   sufferings  of  man's  heart;  and  I  wish 

to   have   these   abstractions    presented   as    impersonations, 

that  is,  as  clothed  with  human  attributes  of  life,  and  with 

7-26 :  c,  h,  f,  u.  27-95,  3 :  hi  bi  e. 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY  95 

functions  pointing  to  flesh.  Let  us  call  them,  therefore, 
Our  Ladies  of  Sorrow.  I  know  them  thoroughly,  and  have 
walked  in  all  their  kingdoms.  Three  sisters  they  are, 
of  one  mysterious  household;  and  their  paths  are  wide 
apart;  but  of  their  dominion  there  is  no  end.  Them  I  5 
saw  often  conversing  with  Levana,  and  sometimes  about 
myself.  Do  they  talk,  then  ?  Oh,  no !  Mighty  phantoms 
like  these  disdain  the  infirmities  of  language.  They  may 
utter  voices  through  the  organs  of  man  when  they  dwell 
in  human  hearts,  but  amongst  themselves  is  no  voice  nor  10 
sound — eternal  silence  reigns  in  their  kingdoms.  They 
spoke  not  as  they  talked  with  Levana.  They  whispered 
not.  They  sang  not.  Though  oftentimes  methought  they 
might  have  sung;  for  I  upon  earth  had  heard  their  mys- 
teries oftentimes  deciphered  by  harp  and  timbrel,  by  dul-  15 
cimer  and  organ.  Like  God,  whose  servants  they  are, 
they  utter  their  pleasure,  not  by  sounds  that  perish,  or 
by  words  that  go  astray,  but  by  signs  in  heaven — by  changes 
on  earth — by  pulses  in  secret  rivers — heraldries  painted 
on  darkness — and  hieroglyphics  written  on  the  tablets  of  20 
the  brain.  They  wheeled  in  mazes;  /  spelled  the  steps. 
They  telegraphed  from  afar;  /  read  the  signals.  They 
conspired  together;  and  on  the  mirrors  of  darkness  my 
eye  traced  the  plots.  Theirs  were  the  symbols, — mine  are 
the  words.  25 

What  is  it  the  sisters  are?  What  is  it  that  they  do? 
Let  me  describe  their  form,  and  their  presence;  if  form 
it  were  that  still  fluctuated  in  its  outline ;  or  presence  it 
were  that  for  ever  advanced  to  the  front,  or  for  ever 
receded  amongst  shades.  30 

The  eldest  of  the  three  is  named  Mater  Lachrymarum, 
Our  Lady  of  Tears.     She  it  is  that  night  and  day  raves 
and   moans,    calling    for   vanished    faces.      She   stood    in 
3-16 :  c,  o,  r.  16-25  :  c,  o.  31-96,  7 :  c,  f,  n. 


96  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

Rama,  when  a  voice  was  heard  of  lamentation — Rachel 
weeping  for  her  children,  and  refusing  to  be  comforted. 
She  it  was  that  stood  in  Bethlehem  on  the  night  when 
Herod's  sword  swept  its  nurseries  of  Innocents,  and  the 

5  little  feet  were  stiffened  for  ever,  which,  heard  at  times 
as  they  tottered  along  floors  overhead,  woke  pulses  of  love 
in  household  hearts  that  were  not  unmarked  in  heaven. 

Her  eyes  are  sweet  and  subtle,  wild  and  sleepy  by  turns ; 
oftentimes  rising  to  the  clouds;  oftentimes  challenging  the 

10  heavens.  She  wears  a  diadem  round  her  head.  And  I 
knew  by  childish  memories  that  she  could  go  abroad  upon 
the  winds,  when  she  heard  the  sobbing  of  litanies  or  the 
thundering  of  organs  and  when  she  beheld  the  mustering 
of  summer  clouds.  This  sister,  the  elder,  it  is  that  car- 

15  ries  keys  more  than  papal  at  her  girdle,  which  open  every 
cottage  and  every  palace.  She,  to  my  knowledge,  sate  all 
last  summer  by  the  bedside  of  the  blind  beggar,  him  that 
so  often  and  so  gladly  I  talked  with,  whose  pious  daughter, 
eight  years  old,  with  the  sunny  countenance,  resisted  the 

20  temptations  of  play  and  village  mirth  to  travel  all  day 
long  on  dusty  roads  with  her  afflicted  father.  For  this 
did  God  send  her  a  great  reward.  In  the  spring-time  of 
the  year,  and  whilst  yet  her  own  spring  was  budding, 
He  recalled  her  to  Himself.  But  her  blind  father  mourns 

25  for  ever  over  her;  still  he  dreams  at  midnight  that  the  little 
guiding  hand  is  locked  within  his  own ;  and  still  he  wakens 
to  a  darkness  that  is  now  within  a  second  and  a  deeper 
darkness.  This  Mater  Lachrymarum  also  has  been  sitting 
all  this  winter  of  1844-5  within  the  bedchamber  of  the 

30  Czar,  bringing  before  his  eyes  a  daughter  (not  less  pious) 
that  vanished  to  God  not  less  suddenly,  and  left  behind 
her  a  darkness  not  less  profound.  By  the  power  of  her 
keys  it  is  that  Our  Lady  of  Tears  glides  a  ghostly  in- 

8- 1 6  :  h,  u.  16-24  :  b,  r.  24-97,  5  :  c,  o. 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY  97 

truder  into  the  chambers  of  sleepless  men,  sleepless  women, 
sleepless  children,  from  Ganges  to  the  Nile,  from  Nile  to 
Mississippi.  And  her,  because  she  is  the  first-born  of  her 
house,  and  has  the  widest  empire,  let  us  honor  with  the  title 
of  "  Madonna."  5 

The  second  sister  is  called  Mater  Suspiriorum,  Our 
Lady  of  Sighs.  She  never  scales  the  clouds,  nor  walks 
abroad  upon  the  winds.  She  wears  no  diadem.  And  her 
eyes,  if  they  were  ever  seen,  would  be  neither  sweet  nor 
subtle;  no  man  could  read  their  story;  they  would  be  10 
found  rilled  with  perishing  dreams,  and  with  wrecks  of 
forgotten  delirium.  But  she  raises  not  her  eyes ;  her  head, 
on  which  sits  a  dilapidated  turban,  droops  for  ever;  for 
ever  fastens  on  the  dust.  She  weeps  not.  She  groans  not. 
But  she  sighs  inaudibly  at  intervals.  Her  sister,  Madonna,  15 
is  oftentimes  stormy  and  frantic;  raging  in  the  highest 
against  heaven;  and  demanding  back  her  darlings.  But 
Our  Lady  of  Sighs  never  clamors,  never  defies,  dreams 
not  of  rebellious  aspirations.  She  is  humble  to  abject- 
ness.  Hers  is  the  meekness  that  belongs  to  the  hope-  20 
less.  Murmur  she  may,  but  it  is  in  her  sleep.  Whisper 
she  may,  but  it  is  to  herself  in  the  twilight.  Mutter  she 
does  at  times,  but  it  is  in  solitary  places  that  are  desolate 
as  she  is  desolate,  in  ruined  cities,  and  when  the  sun  has 
gone  down  to  his  rest.  This  sister  is  the  visitor  of  the  25 
Pariah,  of  the  Jew,  of  the  bondsman  to  the  oar  in  Medi- 
terranean galleys,  of  the  English  criminal  in  Norfolk  Island, 
blotted  out  from  the  books  of  remembrance  in  sweet  far- 
off  England,  of  the  baffled  penitent  reverting  his  eye  for 
ever  upon  a  solitary  grave,  which  to  him  seems  the  altar  30 
overthrown  of  some  past  and  bloody  sacrifice,  on  which 
altar  no  oblations  can  now  be  availing,  whether  towards  par- 
don that  he  might  implore,  or  towards  reparation  that  he 

6-20  :  c,  b,  m.  20-98,  i  :  c,  h,  m. 


98  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

might  attempt.  Every  slave  that  at  noonday  looks  up  to 
the  tropical  sun  with  timid  reproach,  as  he  points  with  one 
hand  to  the  earth,  our  general  mother,  but  for  him  a  step- 
mother, as  he  points  with  the  other  hand  to  the  Bible,  our 
5  general  teacher,  but  against  him  sealed  and  sequestered;— 
every  woman  sitting  in  darkness,  without  love  to  shelter 
her  head,  or  hope  to  illumine  her  solitude,  because  the 
heaven-born  instincts  kindling  in  her  nature  germs  of  holy 
affections,  which  God  implanted  in  her  womanly  bosom, 

10  having  been  stifled  by  social  necessities,  now  burn  sullenly 
to  waste,  like  sepulchral  lamps  amongst  the  ancients; — 
every  nun  defrauded  of  her  unreturning  May-time  by 
wicked  kinsmen,  whom  God  will  judge; — every  captive 
in  every  dungeon; — all  that  are  betrayed,  and  all  that  are 

15  rejected;  outcasts  by  traditionary  law,  and  children  of 
hereditary  disgrace — all  these  walk  with  Our  Lady  of 
Sighs.  .She  also  carries  a  key ;  but  she  needs  it  little.  For 
her  kingdom  is  chiefly  amongst  the  tents  of  Shem,  and  the 
houseless  vagrant  of  every  clime.  Yet  in  the  very  highest 

20  ranks  of  man  she  finds  chapels  of  her  own ;  and  even  in 
glorious  England  there  are  some  that,  to  the  world,  carry 
their  heads  as  proudly  as  the  reindeer,  who  yet  secretly 
have  received  her  mark  upon  their  foreheads. 

But  the  third  sister,  who  is  also  the  youngest —     Hush! 

25  whisper,  whilst  we  talk  of  her!  Her  kingdom  is  not 
large,  or  else  no  flesh  should  live ;  but  within  that  king- 
dom all  power  is  hers.  Her  head,  turreted  like  that  of 
Cybele,  rises  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  sight.  She  droops 
not;  and  her  eyes  rising  so  high,  might  be  hidden  by  dis- 

30  tance.     But,  being  what  they  are,  they  cannot  be  hidden ; 

through   the   treble   veil   of   crape   which   she   wears,   the 

fierce  light  of  a  blazing  misery,  that  rests  not  for  matins 

or  for  vespers — for  noon  of  day  or  noon  of   night — for 

1-17:0,  h,e  (cf.  86,  11-18).  30-99,  15:6,  h,v. 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY  99 

ebbing  or  for  flowing  tide — may  be  read  from  the  very 
ground.  She  is  the  defier  of  God.  She  also  is  the  mother 
of  lunacies,  and  the  suggestress  of  suicides.  Deep  lie  the 
roots  of  her  power ;  but  narrow  is  the  nation  that  she  rules. 
For  she  can  approach  only  those  in  whom  a  profound  nature  5 
has  been  upheaved  by  central  convulsions;  in  whom  the 
heart  trembles  and  the  brain  rocks  under  conspiracies  of 
tempest  from  without  and  tempest  from  within.  Madonna 
moves  with  uncertain  steps,  fast  or  slow,  but  still  with 
tragic  grace.  Our  Lady  of  Sighs  creeps  timidly  and  10 
stealthily.  But  this  youngest  sister  moves  with  incalculable 
motions,  bounding,  and  with  a  tiger's  leaps.  She  carries 
no  key ;  for,  though  coming  rarely  amongst  men,  she  storms 
all  doors  at  which  she  is  permitted  to  enter  at  all.  And 
her  name  is  Mater  Tenebrarum — Our  Lady  of  Darkness.  15 

These  were  the  Semnai  Theai,  or  Sublime  Goddesses — 
these  were  the  Eumenides,  or  Gracious  Ladies  (so  called 
by  antiquity  in  shuddering  propitiation) — of  my  Oxford 
dreams.  Madonna  spoke.  She  spoke  by  her  mysterious 
hand.  Touching  my  head,  she  beckoned  to  Our  Lady  20 
of  Sighs;  and  what  she  spoke,  translated  out  of  the  signs 
which  (except  in  dreams)  no  man  reads,  was  this: — 

"  Lo !  here  is  he,  whom  in  childhood  I  dedicated  to  my 
altars.  This  is  he  that  once  I  made  my  darling.  Him 
I  led  astray,  him  I  beguiled,  and  from  heaven  I  'stole  away  25 
his  young  heart  to  mine.  Through  me  did  he  become 
idolatrous;  and  through  me  it  was,  by  languishing  desires, 
that  he  worshipped  the  worm,  and  prayed  to  the  wormy 
grave.  Holy  was  the  grave  to  him;  lovely  was  its  dark- 
ness; saintly  its  corruption.  Him,  this  young  idolater,  I  30 
have  seasoned  for  thee,  dear  gentle  Sister  of  Sighs !  Do 
thou  take  him  now  to  thy  heart,  and  season  him  for  our 
dreadful  sister.  And  thou  " — turning  to  the  Mater  Tene- 
23-100, 13:0,  e,  h,v. 


ioo  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

brarum,  she  said — "  wicked  sister,  that  temptest  and  hatest, 
do  thou  take  him  from  her.  See  that  thy  scepter  lie  heavy 
on  his  head.  Suffer  not  woman  and  her  tenderness  to  sit 
near  him  in  his  darkness.  Banish  the  frailties  of  hope — 

5  wither  the  relentings  of  love — scorch  the  fountains  of  tears : 
curse  him  as  only  thou  canst  curse.  So  shall  he  be  ac- 
complished in  the  furnace — so  shall  he  see  the  things  that 
ought  not  to  be  seen — sights  that  are  abominable,  and 
secrets  that  are  unutterable.  So  shall  he  read  elder  truths, 

10  sad  truths,  grand  truths,  fearful  truths.  So  shall  he  rise 
again  before  he  dies.  And  so  shall  our  commission  be 
accomplished  which  from  God  we  had — to  plague  his  heart 
until  we  had  unfolded  the  capacities  of  his  spirit." 

1,6,7,8,9,  ii,  12,  13,  14. 


THOMAS  CARLYLE 
1795-1881 

THE  OPERA  * 

(Dear  P., — Not  having  anything  of  my  own  which  I  could  con- 
tribute (as  is  my  wish  and  duty)  to  this  pious  Adventure  of  yours, 
and  not  being  able  in  these  busy  days  to  get  anything  ready,  I 
decide  to  offer  you  a  bit  of  an  Excerpt  from  that  singular  Con- 
spectus of  England,  lately  written,  not  yet  printed,  by  Professor 
Ezechiel  Peasemeal,  a  distinguished  American  friend  of  mine.  Dr. 
Peasemeal  will  excuse  my  printing  it  here.  His  Conspectus,  a 
work  of  some  extent,  has  already  been  crowned  by  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  Society  of  Buncombe,  which  includes,  as  you  know,  the 
chief  thinkers  of  the  New  World;  and  it  will  probably  be  printed 
entire  in  their  "  Transactions "  one  day.  Meanwhile  let  your 
readers  have  the  first  taste  of  it;  and  much  good  may  it  do  them 
and  you! — T.  C.) 

Music  is  well  said  to  be  the  speech  of  angels;  in  fact, 
nothing  among  the  utterances  allowed  to  man  is  felt  to  be 
so  divine.  It  brings  us  near  to  the  Infinite;  we  look  for 
moments,  across  the  cloudy  elements,  into  the  eternal  Sea 
of  Light,  when  song  leads  and  inspires  us.  Serious  nations,  5 
all  nations  that  can  still  listen  to  the  mandate  of  Nature, 
have  prized  song  and  music  as  the  highest;  as  a  vehicle 
for  worship,  for  prophecy,  and  for  whatsoever  in  them  was 
divine.  Their  singer  was  a  vales,  admitted  to  the  council 
of  the  universe,  friend  of  the  gods,  and  choicest  benefactor  10 
to  man. 

1  Keepsake  for  1852.  The  "  dear  P."  there,  I  recollect,  was 
my  old  friend  Procter  (Barry  Cornwall);  and  his  "pious  Adven- 
ture" had  reference  to  that  same  publication,  under  touching 
human  circumstances  which  had  lately  arisen. 

i-n  :  q,  f,  n. 
101 


IO2  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 


%  ir  was  actually  so  in  Greek,  in  Roman,  in  Mos- 
lem, Christian,  most  of  all  in  Old-Hebrew  times  :  and  if 
you  look  how  it  now  is,  you  will  find  a  change  that  should 
astonish  you.  Good  Heavens,  from  a  Psalm  of  Asaph  to 
5  a  seat  at  the  London  Opera  in  the  Haymarket,  what  a 
road  have  men  traveled  !  The  waste  that  is  made  in  music 
is  probably  among  the  saddest  of  all  our  squanderings 
of  God's  gifts.  Music  has,  for  a  long  time  past,  been 
avowedly  mad,  divorced  from  sense  and  the  reality  of  things  ; 

10  and  runs  about  now  as  an  open  Bedlamite,  for  a  good 
many  generations  back,  bragging  that  she  has  nothing  to 
do  with  sense  and  reality,  but  with  fiction  and  delirium 
only;  and  stares  with  unaffected  amazement,  not  able  to 
suppress  an  elegant  burst  of  witty  laughter,  at  my  sug- 

15  gesting  the  old  fact  to  her. 

Fact  nevertheless  it  is,  forgotten,  and  fallen  ridiculous 
as  it  may  be.  Tyrtaeus,  who  had  a  little  music,  did  not 
sing  Barbers  of  Seville,  but  the  need  of  beating  back  one's 
country's  enemies;  a  most  true  song,  to  which  the  hearts 

20  of  men  did  burst  responsive  into  fiery  melody,  followed 
by  fiery  strokes  before  long.  Sophocles  also  sang,  and 
showed  in  grand  dramatic  rhythm  and  melody,  not  a  fable 
but  a  fact,  the  best  he  could  interpret  it;  the  judgments 
of  Eternal  Destiny  upon  the  erring  sons  of  men.  Aeschy- 

25  lus,  Sophocles,  all  noble  poets  were  priests  as  well  ;  and 
sang  the  truest  (which  was  also  tjie  divinest)  they  had 
been  privileged  to  discover  here  below.  To  "  sing  the  praise 
of  God,"  that,  you  will  find,  if  you  can  interpret  old  words, 
and  see  what  new  things  they  mean,  was  always,  and  will 

30  always  be,  the  business  of  the  singer.  He  who  forsakes 
that  business,  and,  wasting  our  divinest  gifts,  sings  the  praise 
of  Chaos,  what  shall  we  say  of  him! 

David,  King  of  Judah,  a  soul  inspired  by  divine  music 
1-9  :  a,  o.  10-15  :  c,  r.  16-24  :  q,  r,  o.  24-32  :  o,  q.  33-103,  12  :  c,  q,  r,  o. 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  103 

and  much  other  heroism,  was  wont  to  pour  himself  in 
song;  he,  with  seer's  eye  and  heart,  discerned  the  God- 
like amid  the  Human;  struck  tones  that  were  an  echo 
of  the  sphere-harmonies,  and  are  still  felt  to  be  such. 
Reader,  art  thou  one  of  a  thousand,  able  still  to  read  5 
a  Psalm  of  David,  and  catch  some  echo  of  it  through  the 
old  dim  centuries;  feeling  far  off,  in  thy  own  heart, 
what  it  once  was  to  other  hearts  made  as  thine?  To 
sing  it  attempt  not,  for  it  is  impossible  in  this  late  time; 
only  know  that  it  once  was  sung.  Then  go  to  the  opera,  10 
and  hear,  with  unspeakable  reflections,  what  things  men 
now  sing! 

Of  the  Haymarket  Opera,  my  account,  in  fine,  is  this. 
Lusters,  candelabras,  painting,  gilding  at  discretion;  a  hall  15 
as  of  the  Caliph  Alraschid,  or  him  that  commanded  the 
slaves  of  the  Lamp;  a  hall  as  if  fitted-up  by  the  genii,  re- 
gardless of  expense.  Upholstery,  and  the  outlay  of  human 
capital,  could  do  no  more.  Artists,  too,  as  they  are  called, 
have  been  got  together  from  the  ends  of  the  world,  re-  20 
gardless  likewise  of  expense,  to  do  dancing  and  singing, 
some  of  them  even  geniuses  in  their  craft.  One  singer 
in  particular,  called  Coletti  or  some  such  name,  seemed 
to  me,  by  the  cast  of  his  face,  by  the  tones  of  his  voice, 
by  his  general  bearing,  so  far  as  I  could  read  it,  to  be  25 
a  man  of  deep  and  ardent  sensibilities,  of  delicate  intui- 
tions, just  sympathies;  originally  an  almost  poetic  soul, 
or  man  of  genius,  as  we  term  it ;  stamped  by  Nature  as 
capable  of  far  other  work  than  squalling  here,  like  a  blind 
Samson,  to  make  the  Philistines  sport!  30 

Nay,  all  of  them  had  aptitudes,  perhaps  of  a  distinguished 
kind;  and  must,  by  their  own  and  other  people's  labor, 
have   got    a   training   equal   or   superior   in    toilsomeness, 
14-22 :  q,  r.  22-30 :  c,  f,  n.  31-104,  25  :  «,  v  (cf.  96,  8-97,  5). 


IO4  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

earnest  assiduity,  and  patient  travail,  to  what  breeds  men 
to  the  most  arduous  trades.  I  speak  not  of  kings,  grandees, 
or  the  like  show-figures;  but  few  soldiers,  judges,  men  of 
letters,  can  have  had  such  pains  taken  with  them.  The 
5  very  ballet-girls,  with  their  muslin  saucers  round  them, 
were  perhaps  little  short  of  miraculous;  whirling  and 
spinning  there  in  strange  mad  vortexes,  and  then  suddenly 
fixing  themselves  motionless,  each  upon  her  left  or  right 
great  toe,  with  the  other  leg  stretched  out  at  an  angle  of 

10  ninety  degrees, — as  if  you  had  suddenly  pricked  into  the 
floor,  by  one  of  their  points,  a  pair,  or  rather  a  multitudinous 
cohort,  of  mad,  restlessly  jumping  and  clipping  scissors, 
and  so  bidden  them  rest,  with  opened  blades,  and  stand  still, 
in  the  Devil's  name!  A  truly  notable  motion;  marvelous, 

15  almost  miraculous,  were  not  the  people  there  so  used  to  it. 
Motion  peculiar  to  the  Opera;  perhaps  the  ugliest,  and 
surely  one  of  the  most  difficult,  ever  taught  a  female  crea- 
ture in  this  world.  Nature  abhors  it;  but  art  does  at  least 
admit  it  to  border  on  the  impossible.  One  little  Cerito,  or 

20  Taglioni  the  Second,  that  night  when  I  was  there,  went 
bounding  from  the  floor  as  if  she  had  been  made  of  Indian- 
rubber,  or  filled  with  hydrogen  gas,  and  inclined  by  posi- 
tive levity  to  bolt  through  the  ceiling;  perhaps  neither 
Semiramis  nor  Catherine  the  Second  had  bred  herself  so 

25  carefully. 

Such  talent,  and  such  martyrdom  of  training,  gathered 
from  the  four  winds,  was  now  here,  to  do  its  feat  and  be 
paid  for  it.  Regardless  of  expense,  indeed!  The  purse  of 
Fortunatus  seemed  to  have  opened  itself,  and  the  divine  art 

30  of  Musical  Sound  and  Rhythmic  Motion  was  welcomed  with 

an  explosion  of  all  the  magnificences  which  the  other  arts, 

fine  and  coarse,  could  achieve.     For  you  are  to  think  of 

some  Rossini  or  Bellini  in  the  rear  of  it,  too ;  to  say  nothing 

4-14 :  i.  26-28  :  e.  28-105,  4  •  c>  *>  °* 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  105 

of  the  Stanfields,  and  hosts  of  scene-painters,  machinists, 
engineers,  enterprisers ; — fit  to  have  taken  Gibraltar,  written 
the  History  of  England,  or  reduced  Ireland  into  Industrial 
Regiments,  had  they  so  set  their  minds  to  it! 

Alas,  and  of  all  these  notable  or  noticeable  human  tal-  5 
ents,  and  excellent  perseverances  and  energies,  backed  by 
mountains  of  wealth,  and  led  by  the  divine  art  of  Music  and 
Rhythm  vouchsafed  by  Heaven  to  them  and  us,  what  was  to 
be  the  issue  here  this  evening?  An  hour's  amusement,  not 
amusing  either,  but  wearisome  and  dreary,  to  a  high-dizened  10 
select  populace  of  male  and  female  persons,  who  seemed  to 
me  not  much  worth  amusing!  Could  anyone  have  pealed 
into  their  hearts  once,  one  true  thought,  and  glimpse  of  Self- 
vision  :  "  High-dizened,  most  expensive  persons,  Aristocracy 
so-called,  or  Best  of  the  World,  beware,  beware  what  proofs  15 
you  are  giving  here  of  betterness  and  bestness !  "  And  then 
the  salutary  pang  of  conscience  in  reply :  "  A  select  populace, 
with  money  in  its  purse,  and  drilled  a  little  by  the  posture- 
master  :  good  Heavens !  if  that  were  what,  here  and  every- 
where in  God's  Creation,  I  am?  And  a  world  all  dying  20 
because  I  am,  and  show  myself  to  be,  and  to  have  long 
been,  even  that?  John,  the  carriage,  the  carriage;  swift! 
Let  me  go  home  in  silence,  to  reflection,  perhaps  to  sack- 
cloth and  ashes !  "  This,  and  not  amusement,  would  have 
profited  those  high-dizened  persons.  25 

Amusement,  at  any  rate,  they  did  not  get  from  Euterpe 
and  Melpomene.  These  two  Muses,  sent  for  regardless  of 
expense,  I  could  see,  were  but  the  vehicle  of  a  kind  of  service 
which  I  judged  to  be  Paphian  rather.  Young  beauties  of 
both  sexes  used  their  opera  glasses,  you  could  notice,  not  30 
entirely  for  looking  at  the  stage.  And,  it  must  be  owned, 
the  light,  in  this  explosion  of  all  the  upholsteries,  and  the 
human  fine  arts  and  coarse,  was  magical ;  and  made  your 
5-16 : 1.  16-25  :  o  (cf.  85,  19-86,  5).  26-31 :  w. 


io6  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

fair  one  an  Armida, — if  you  liked  her  better  so.  Nay,  cer- 
tain old  Improper- Females  (of  quality),  in  their  rouge  and 
jewels,  even  these  looked  some  reminiscence  of  enchant- 
ment; and  I  saw  this  and  the  other  lean  domestic  Dandy, 
5  with  icy  smile  on  his  old  worn  face ;  this  and  the  other 
Marquis  Chatabagues,  Prince  Mahogany,  or  the  like  foreign 
Dignitary,  tripping  into  the  boxes  of  said  females,  grinning 
there  awhile,  with  dyed  mustachios  and  macassar-oil  graci- 
osity,  and  then  tripping  out  again; — and,  in  fact,  I  per- 

10  ceived  that  Coletti  and  Cerito  and  the  Rhythmic  Arts  were 
a  mere  accompaniment  here. 

Wonderful  to  see;  and  sad,  if  you  had  eyes!  Do  but 
think  of  it.  Cleopatra  threw  pearls  into  her  drink,  in  mere 
waste;  which  was  reckoned  foolish  of  her.  But  here  had 

15  the  Modern  Aristocracy  of  men  brought  the  divinest  of  its 
Arts,  heavenly  Music  itself ;  and,  piling  all  the  upholsteries 
and  ingenuities  that  other  human  art  could  do,  had  lighted 
them  into  a  bonfire  to  illuminate  an  hour's  flirtation  of 
Chatabagues,  Mahogany,  and  these  improper  persons! 

20  Never  in  Nature  had  I  seen  such  waste  before.  O  Coletti, 
you  whose  inborn  melody,  once  of  kindred,  as  I  judged,  to 
"  the  Melodies  Eternal,"  might  have  valiantly  weeded-out 
this  and  the  other  false  thing  from  the  ways  of  men,  and 
made  a  bit  of  God's  Creation  more  melodious — they  have 

25  purchased  you  away  from  that ;  chained  you  to  the  wheel  of 
Prince  Mahogany's  chariot,  and  here  you  make  sport  for  a 
macassar  Chatabagues  and  his  improper-females  past  the 
prime  of  life!  Wretched  spiritual  Nigger,  oh,  if  you  had 
some  genius,  and  were  not  a  born  Nigger  with  mere  appe- 

30  tite  for  pumpkin,  should  you  have  endured  such  a  lot  ?    I 

lament  for  you  beyond  all  other  expenses.    Other  expenses 

are  light ;  you  are  the  Cleopatra's  pearl  that  should  not  have 

been  flung  into  Mahogany's  claret-cup.     And  Rossini,  too, 

i-n:I,  c,  q.  12-20:  q.  20-33  :  q,  o.  33~IO7,  9 :  h,  o,  q. 


THOMAS  CARLYLE  107 

and  Mozart  and  Bellini — Oh,  Heavens !  when  I  think  that 
Music  too  is  condemned  to  be  mad,  and  to  burn  herself,  to 
this  end,  on  such  a  funeral  pile — your  celestial  Opera-house 
grows  dark  and  infernal  to  me !  Behind  its  glitter  stalks  the 
shadow  of  Eternal  Death ;  through  it  too,  I  look  not  "  up  into  5 
the  divine  eye,"  as  Richter  has  it,  "  but  down  into  the  bot- 
tomless eye-socket — not  up  towards  God,  Heaven,  and  the 
Throne  of  Truth,  but  too  truly  down  towards  Falsity,  Va- 
cuity, and  the  dwelling-place  of  Everlasting  Despair.  ..." 

Good  sirs,  surely  I  by  no  means  expect  the  Opera  will  10 
abolish  itself  this  year  or  the  next.    But  if  you  ask  me,  Why 
heroes  are  not  born  now,  why  heroisms  are  not  done  now? 
I  will  answer  you :  It  is  a  world  all  calculated  for  strangling 
of  heroisms.    At  every  ingress  into  life,  the  genius  of  the 
world  lies  in  wait  for  heroisms,  and  by  seduction  or  com-  15 
pulsion  unweariedly  does  its  utmost  to  pervert  them  or  ex- 
tinguish them.     Yes;  to  its  Hells  of  sweating  tailors,  dis- 
tressed needlewomen  and  the  like,  this  Opera  of  yours  is  the 
appropriate  Heaven !    Of  a  truth,  if  you  will  read  a  Psalm 
of  Asaph  till  you  understand  it,  and  then  come  hither  and  20 
hear  the  Rossini-and-Coletti  Psalm,  you  will  find  the  ages 
have  altered  a  good  deal.  .   .   . 

Nor  do  I  wish  all  men  to  become  Psalmist  Asaphs  and 
fanatic  Hebrews.  Far  other  is  my  wish;  far  other,  and 
wider,  is  now  my  notion  of  this  Universe.  Populations  of  25 
stern  faces,  stern  as  any  Hebrew,  but  capable  withal  of 
bursting  into  inextinguishable  laughter  on  occasion : — do 
you  understand  that  new  and  better  form  of  character? 
Laughter  also,  if  it  come  from  the  heart,  is  a  heavenly  thing. 
But,  at  least  and  lowest,  I  would  have  you  a  Population  ab-  30 
horring  phantasms ; — abhorring  unveracity  in  all  things ;  and 
in  your  "  amusements,"  which  are  voluntary  and  not  com- 
pulsory things,  abhorring  it  most  impatiently  of  all. 

10-22:  q.  23-33  :q. 
i»  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  n,  12,   13,   14. 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY 
1800-1859 

JOHN  BUN  VAN  l 

THIS  is  an  eminently  beautiful  and  splendid  edition  of 
a  book  which  well  deserves  all  that  the  printer  and  the  en- 
graver can  do  for  it.  The  Life  of  Bunyan  is,  of  course,  not 
a  performance  which  can  add  much  to  the  literary  reputa- 
5  tion  of  such  a  writer  as  Mr.  Southey.  But  it  is  written  in 
excellent  English,  and,  for  the  most  part,  in  an  excellent 
spirit.  Mr.  Southey  propounds,  we  need  not  say,  many 
opinions  from  which  we  altogether  dissent ;  and  his  attempts 
to  excuse  the  odious  persecution  to  which  Bunyan  was  sub- 

10  jected  have  sometimes  moved  our  indignation.  But  we  will 
avoid  this  topic.  We  are  at  present  much  more  inclined  to 
join  in  paying  homage  to  the  genius  of  a  great  man  than  to 
engage  in  a  controversy  concerning  Church-government  and 
toleration. 

15  We  must  not  pass  without  notice  the  engravings  with 
which  this  volume  is  decorated.  Some  of  Mr.  Heath's 
woodcuts  are  admirably  designed  and  executed.  Mr.  Mar- 
tin's illustrations  do  not  please  us  quite  so  well.  His  Valley 
of  the  Shadow  of  Death  is  not  that  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of 

20  Death  which  Bunyan  imagined.  At  all  events,  it  is  not  that 
dark  and  horrible  glen  which  has  from  childhood  been  in 
our  mind's  eye.  The  valley  is  a  cavern :  the  quagmire  is  a 

J"The  Pilgrim's  Progress,  with  a  Life  of  John   Bunyan."      By 
ROBERT  SOUTHEY,  Esq.,  LL.D.,  Poet-Laureate.    8vo.    London,  1830. 

1 5-22:  a.  20-22  :  e.  22-109,  2  :  h. 

108 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY  109 

lake :  the  straight  path  runs  zigzag :  and  Christian  appears 
like  a  speck  in  the  darkness  of  the  immense  vault.  We 
miss,  too,  those  hideous  forms  which  make  so  striking  a 
part  of  the  description  of  Bunyan,  and  which  Salvator  Rosa 
would  have  loved  to  draw.  It  is  with  unfeigned  diffidence  5 
that  we  pronounce  judgment  on  any  question  relating  to 
the  art  of  painting.  But  it  appears  to  us  that  Mr.  Martin 
has  not  of  late  been  fortunate  in  his  choice  of  subjects.  He 
should  never  have  attempted  to  illustrate  the  "  Paradise 
Lost."  There  can  be  no  two  manners  more  directly  opposed  10 
to  each  other  than  the  manner  of  his  painting  and  the 
manner  of  Milton's  poetry.  Those  things  which  are  mere 
accessories  in  the  descriptions  become  the  principal  objects 
in  the  pictures ;  and  those  figures  which  are  most  prominent 
in  the  descriptions  can  be  detected  in  the  pictures  only  by  15 
a  very  close  scrutiny.  Mr.  Martin  has  succeeded  perfectly 
in  representing  the  pillars  and  candelabras  of  Pandae- 
monium.  But  he  has  forgotten  that  Milton's  Pandae- 
monium  is  merely  the  background  to  Satan.  In  the  picture, 
the  Archangel  is  scarcely  visible  amidst  the  endless  colon-  20 
nades  of  his  infernal  palace.  Milton's  Paradise,  again,  is 
merely  the  background  to  his  Adam  and  Eve.  But  in  Mr. 
Martin's  picture  the  landscape  is  everything.  Adam,  Eve, 
and  Raphael,  attract  much  less  notice  than  the  lake  and  the 
mountains,  the  gigantic  flowers,  and  the  giraffes  which  feed  25 
upon  them.  We  read  that  James  II  sat  to  Verelst,  the 
great  flower-painter.  When  the  performance  was  finished, 
his  majesty  appeared  in  the  midst  of  a  bower  of  sun- 
flowers and  tulips,  which  completely  drew  away  all  atten- 
tion from  the  central  figure.  All  who  looked  at  the  portrait  30 
took  it  for  a  flower-piece.  Mr.  Martin,  we  think,  intro- 
duces his  immeasurable  spaces,  his  innumerable  multitudes, 
his  gorgeous  prodigies  of  architecture  and  landscape,  almost 

2-19  :  c.  19-110,  2  :  c,  h  (cf.  97,  21-98,  17). 


no  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

as  unseasonably  as  Verelst  introduced  his  flower-pots  and 
nosegays.  If  Mr.  Martin  were  to  paint  Lear  in  the  storm, 
we  suspect  that  the  blazing  sky,  the  sheets  of  rain,  the 
swollen  torrents,  and  the  tossing  forest  would  draw  away 

5  all  attention  from  the  agonies  of  the  insulted  king  and 
father.  If  he  were  to  paint  the  death  of  Lear,  the  old  man 
asking  the  by-standers  to  undo  his  button,  would  be  thrown 
into  the  shade  by  a  vast  blaze  of  pavilions,  standards, 
armor,  and  heralds'  coats.  Mr.  Martin  would  illustrate 

10  the  "  Orlando  Furioso  "  well,  the  "  Orlando  Innamorato  " 
still  better,  the  "  Arabian  Nights  "  best  of  all.  Fairy  palaces 
and  gardens,  porticoes  of  agate,  and  groves  flowering  with 
emeralds  and  rubies,  inhabited  by  people  for  whom  nobody 
cares,  these  are  his  proper  domain.  He  would  succeed 

15  admirably  in  the  enchanted  ground  of  Alcina,  or  the  man- 
sion of  Aladdin.  But  he  should  avoid  Milton  and  Bunyan. 
The  characteristic  peculiarity  of  "  The  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress "  is  that  it  is  the  only  work  of  its  kind  which  possesses 
a  strong  human  interest.  Other  allegories  only  amuse  the 

20  fancy.  The  allegory  of  Bunyan  has  been  read  by  many 
thousands  with  tears.  There  are  some  good  allegories  in 
Johnson's  works,  and  some  of  still  higher  merit  by  Addison. 
In  these  performances  there  is,  perhaps,  as  much  wit  and 
ingenuity  as  in  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress."  But  the  pleasure 

25  which  is  produced  by  the  Vision  of  Mirza,  the  Vision  of 
Theodore,  the  genealogy  of  Wit,  or  the  contest  between  Rest 
and  Labor,  is  exactly  similar  to  the  pleasure  which  we 
derive  from  one  of  Cowley's  odes  or  from  a  canto  of 
"  Hudibras."  It  is  a  pleasure  which  belongs  wholly  to  the 

30  understanding,   and   in  which   the    feelings   have  no   part 

whatever.     Nay,  even  Spenser  himself,  though  assuredly 

one  of  the  greatest  poets  that  ever  lived,  could  not  succeed 

in  the  attempt  to  make  allegory  interesting.     It   was  in 

2-16 :  c,  h,  f,  n.  108, 15-110, 16 :  b.  17-22 :  o,  c.  23-111,  6 :  c,  d,  f. 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY  in 

vain  that  he  lavished  the  riches  of  his  mind  on  the  House 
of  Pride  and  the  House  of  Temperance.  One  unpardon- 
able fault,  the  fault  of  tediousness,  pervades  the  whole  of 
the  "  Fairy  Queen."  We  become  sick  of  Cardinal  Virtues 
and  Deadly  Sins,  and  long  for  the  society  of  plain  men  and  5 
women.  Of  the  persons  who  read  the  first  canto,  not  one  in 
ten  reaches  the  end  of  the  first  book,  and  not  one  in  a 
hundred  perseveres  to  the  end  of  the  poem.  Very  few  and 
very  weary  are  those  who  are  in  at  the  death  of  the  Blatant 
Beast.  If  the  last  six  books,  which  are  said  to  have  been  10 
destroyed  in  Ireland,  had  been  preserved,  we  doubt  whether 
any  heart  less  stout  than  that  of  a  commentator  would 
have  held  out  to  the  end. 

It  is  not  so  with  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress."  That  won- 
derful book,  while  it  obtains  admiration  from  the  most  TS 
fastidious  critics,  is  loved  by  those  who  are  too  simple  to 
admire  it.  Dr.  Johnson,  all  whose  studies  were  desultory, 
and  who  hated,  as  he  said,  to  read  books  through,  made  an 
exception  in  favor  of  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress."  That  work 
was  one  of  the  two  or  three  works  which  he  wished  longer.  20 
It  was  by  no  common  merit  that  the  illiterate  sectary  ex- 
tracted praise  like  this  from  the  most  pedantic  of  critics 
and  the  most  bigoted  of  Tories.  In  the  wildest  parts  of 
Scotland  "The  Pilgrim's  Progress"  is  the  delight  of  the 
peasantry.  In  every  nursery  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress  "  is  25 
a  greater  favorite  than  "  Jack  the  Giant-killer."  Every 
reader  knows  the  straight  and  narrow  path  as  well  as  he 
knows  a  road  in  which  he  has  gone  backward  and  forward 
a  hundred  times.  This  is  the  highest  miracle  of  genius, 
that  things  which  are  not  should  be  as  though  they  were,  30 
that  the  imaginations  of  one  mind  should  become  the  per- 
sonal recollections  of  another.  And  this  miracle  the  tinker 
has  wrought.  There  is  no  ascent,  no  declivity,  no  resting- 
6-13  :  n.  14-26  :  c,  b.  29-33  :  o,  r.  33-114*  *7  :  c,  h  (cf.  107,  i-  9  ). 


H2  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

place,  no  turn-stile,  with  which  we  are  not  perfectly  ac- 
quainted. The  wicket  gate,  and  the  desolate  swamp  which 
separates  it  from  the  City  of  Destruction,  the  long  line  of 
road,  as  straight  as  a  rule  can  make  it,  the  Interpreter's 
5  house,  and  all  its  fair  shows,  the  prisoner  in  the  iron  cage, 
the  palace,  at  the  doors  of  which  armed  men  kept  guard, 
and  on  the  battlements  of  which  walked  persons  clothed  all 
in  gold,  the  cross  and  the  sepulcher,  the  steep  hill  and  the 
pleasant  arbor,  the  stately  front  of  the  House  Beautiful  by 

10  the  wayside,  the  chained  lions  crouching  in  the  porch,  the 
low,  green  valley  of  Humiliation,  rich  with  grass  and  cov- 
ered with  flocks,  all  are  as  well  known  to  us  as  the  sights 
of  our  own  street.  Then  we  come  to  the  narrow  place 
where  Apollyon  strode  right  across  the  whole  breadth  of 

15  the  way,  to  stop  the  journey  of  Christian,  and  where  after- 
wards the  pillar  was  set  up  to  testify  how  bravely  the  pil- 
grim had  fought  the  good  fight.  As  we  advance,  the  valley 
becomes  deeper  and  deeper.  The  shade  of  the  precipices 
on  both  sides  falls  blacker  and  blacker.  The  clouds  gather 

20  overhead.  Doleful  voices,  the  clanking  of  chains,  and  the 
rushing  of  many  feet  to  and  fro,  are  heard  through  the 
darkness.  The  way,  hardly  discernible  in  gloom,  runs  close 
by  the  mouth  of  the  burning  pit,  which  sends  forth  its 
flames,  its  noisome  smoke,  and  its  hideous  shapes,  to  terrify 

25  the  adventurer.  Thence  he  goes  on,  amidst  the  snares  and 
pitfalls,  with  the  mangled  bodies  of  those  who  have  per- 
ished lying  in  the  ditch  by  his  side.  At  the  end  of  the  long 
dark  valley  he  passes  the  dens  in  which  the  old  giants  dwelt, 
amidst  the  bones  of  those  whom  they  had  slain. 

30      Then  the  road  passes  straight  on  through  a  waste  moor, 

till  at  length  the  towers  of  a  distant  city  appear  before  the 

traveler;  and  soon  he  is  in  the  midst  of  the  innumerable 

multitudes  of  Vanity  Fair.      There  are  the  jugglers  and 

17-20 :  b.  22-29 :  i,  n.  m,  14-112,  29  :  b. 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY  113 

the  apes,  the  shops  and  the  puppet-shows.  There  are 
Italian  Row,  and  French  Row,  and  Spanish  Row,  and 
Britain  Row,  with  their  crowds  of  buyers,  sellers,  and 
loungers,  jabbering  all  the  languages  of  the  earth. 

Thence  we  go  on  by  the  little  hill  of  the  silver  mine,  and  5 
through  the  meadow  of  lilies,  along  the  bank  of  that  pleasant 
river  which  is  bordered  on  both  sides  by  fruit-trees.     On 
the  left  side  branches  off  the  path  leading  to  the  horrible 
castle,  the  court-yard  of  which  is  paved  with  the  skulls  of 
pilgrims ;  and  right  onward  are  the  sheepfolds  and  orchards  10 
of  the  Delectable  Mountains. 

From  the  Delectable  Mountains,  the  way  lies  through 
the  fogs  and  briers  of  the  Enchanted  Ground,  with  here 
and  there  a  bed  of  soft  cushions  spread  under  a  green 
arbor.  And  beyond  is  the  land  of  Beulah,  where  the  15 
flowers,  the  grapes,  and  the  songs  of  birds  never  cease, 
and  where  the  sun  shines  night  and  day.  Thence  are 
plainly  seen  the  golden  pavements  and  streets  of  pearl,  on 
the  other  side  of  that  black  and  cold  river  over  which  there 
is  no  bridge.  20 

All  the  stages  of  the  journey,  all  the  forms  which  cross 
or  overtake  the  pilgrims,  giants,  and  hobgoblins,  ill-favored 
ones  and  shining  ones,  the  tall,  comely,  swarthy  Madam 
Bubble,  with  her  great  purse  by  her  side,  and  her  fingers 
playing  with  the  money,  the  black  man  in  the  bright  vesture,  25 
Mr.  Worldly  Wiseman  and  my  Lord  Hategood,  Mr.  Talk- 
ative and  Mrs.  Timorous,  all  are  actually  existing  beings 
to  us.  We  follow  the  travelers  through  their  allegorical 
progress  with  interest  not  inferior  to  that  with  which  we 
follow  Elizabeth  from  Siberia  to  Moscow,  or  Jeanie  Deans  30 
from  Edinburgh  to  London.  Bunyan  is  almost  the  only 
writer  who  ever  gave  to  the  abstract  the  interest  of  the 
concrete.  In  the  works  of  many  celebrated  authors,  men 
5-1 1  :b.  12-20  :i,c.  21-28  :  c,  a.  31-114,  7:  c,b,j. 


H4  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

are  mere  personifications.  We  have  not  a  jealous  man, 
but  jealousy,  not  a  traitor,  but  perfidy,  not  a  patriot,  but 
patriotism.  The  mind  of  Bunyan,  on  the  contrary,  was 
so  imaginative  that  personifications,  when  he  dealt  with 
5  them,  became  men.  A  dialogue  between  two  qualities,  in 
his  dream,  has  more  dramatic  effect  than  a  dialogue  be- 
tween two  human  beings  in  most  plays.  In  this  respect 
the  genius  of  Bunyan  bore  a  great  resemblance  to  that  of 
a  man  who  had  very  little  else  in  common  with  him,  Percy 

10  Bysshe  Shelley.  The  strong  imagination  of  Shelley  made 
him  an  idolater  in  his  own  despite.  Out  of  the  most  indefi- 
nite terms  of  a  hard,  cold,  dark,  metaphysical  system,  he 
made  a  gorgeous  Pantheon,  full  of  beautiful,  majestic,  and 
life-like  forms.  He  turned  atheism  itself  into  a  mythology, 

15  rich  with  visions  as  glorious  as  the  gods  that  live  in  the 
marble  of  Phidias,  or  the  virgin  saints  that  smile  on  us 
from  the  canvas  of  Murillo.  The  Spirit  of  Beauty,  the 
Principle  of  Good,  the  Principle  of  Evil,  when  he  treated 
of  them,  ceased  to  be  abstractions.  They  took  shape  and 

20  color.  They  were  no  longer  mere  words ;  but  "  intelligible 
forms";  "fair  humanities";  objects  of  love,  of  adoration, 
or  of  fear.  As  there  can  be  no  stronger  sign  of  a  mind 
destitute  of  the  poetical  faculty  than  that  tendency  which 
was  so  common  among  the  writers  of  the  French  school  to 

25  turn  images  into  abstractions,  Venus,  for  example,  into 
Love,  Minerva  into  Wisdom,  Mars  into  War,  and  Bacchus 
into  Festivity,  so  there  can  be  no  stronger  sign  of  a  mind 
truly  poetical  than  a  disposition  to  reverse  this  abstracting 
process,  and  to  make  individuals  out  of  generalities.  Some 

30  of  the  metaphysical  and  ethical  theories  of  Shelley  were 

certainly    most    absurd    and    pernicious.      But    we    doubt 

whether  any  modern  poet  has  possessed  in  an  equal  degree 

some  of  the  highest  qualities  of  the  great  ancient  masters, 

7-10  :  x.  10,  n:b.  11-22:),  c.  22-29 :  i. 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY  115 

The  words  bard  and  inspiration,  which  seem  so  cold  and 
affected  when  applied  to  other  modern  writers,  have  a  per- 
fect propriety  when  applied  to  him.  He  was  not  an  author, 
but  a  bard.  His  poetry  seems  not  to  have  been  an  art,  but 
an  inspiration.  Had  he  lived  to  the  full  age  of  man,  he  5 
might  not  improbably  have  given  to  the  world  some  great 
work  of  the  very  highest  rank  in  design  and  execution.  But, 
alas! 

6  &6jvi(  efta  j)6ov     lithvae  diva 
rbv  Mwacuf  0t/lov  avdpa,  rbv  ov  JXvpQaiaiv  arrexQij.  IO 

But  we  must  return  to  Bunyan.  "  The  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress "  undoubtedly  is  not  a  perfect  allegory.  The  types 
are  often  inconsistent  with  each  other;  and  sometimes  the 
allegorical  disguise  is  altogether  thrown  off.  The  river,  for 
example,  is  emblematic  of  death ;  and  we  are  told  that  every  15 
human  being  must  pass  through  the  river.  But  Faithful 
does  not  pass  through  it.  He  is  martyred,  not  in  shadow, 
but  in  reality,  at  Vanity  Fair.  Hopeful  talks  to  Christian 
about  Esau's  birthright  and  about  his  own  convictions  of 
sin  as  Bunyan  might  have  talked  with  one  of  his  own  con-  20 
gregation.  The  damsels  at  the  House  Beautiful  catechize 
Christiana's  boys,  as  any  good  ladies  might  catechize  any 
boys  at  a  Sunday  School.  But  we  do  not  believe  that  any 
man,  whatever  might  be  his  genius,  and  whatever  his  good 
luck,  could  long  continue  a  figurative  history  without  falling  25 
into  many  inconsistencies.  We  are  sure  that  inconsistencies, 
scarcely  less  gross  than  the  worst  into  which  Bunyan  has 
fallen,  may  be  found  in  the  shortest  and  most  elaborate 
allegories  of  the  Spectator  and  the  Rambler.  The  "  Tale  of 
a  Tub  "  and  the  "  History  of  John  Bull  "  swarm  with  similar  30 
errors,  if  the  name  of  error  can  be  properly  applied  to  that 
which  is  unavoidable.  It  is  not  easy  to  make  a  simile  go  on 
all-fours.  But  we  believe  that  no  human  ingenuity  could 
3-5:  c,b.  11-23  :b,j.  29-116,4:0. 


n6  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

produce  such  a  centipede  as  a  long  allegory  in  which  the 
correspondence  between  the  outward  sign  and  the  thing  sig- 
nified should  be  exactly  preserved.  Certainly  no  writer, 
ancient  or  modern,  has  yet  achieved  the  adventure.  The 
5  best  thing,  on  the  whole,  that  an  allegorist  can  do,  is  to 
present  to  his  readers  a  succession  of  analogies,  each  of 
which  may  separately  be  striking  and  happy,  without  looking 
very  nicely  to  see  whether  they  harmonize  with  each  other. 
This  Bunyan  has  done ;  and,  though  a  minute  scrutiny  may 

10  detect  inconsistencies  in  every  page  of  his  Tale,  the  general 
effect  which  the  Tale  produces  on  all  persons,  learned  and 
unlearned,  proves  that  he  has  done  well.  The  passages 
which  it  is  most  difficult  to  defend  are  those  in  which  he 
altogether  drops  the  allegory,  and  puts  in  the  mouth  of 

15  his  pilgrims  religious  ejaculations  and  disquisitions,  better 
suited  to  his  own  pulpit  at  Bedford  or  Reading  than  to  the 
Enchanted  Ground  or  to  the  Interpreter's  Garden.  Yet  even 
these  passages,  though  we  will  not  undertake  to  defend 
them  against  the  objections  of  critics,  we  feel  that  we  could 

20  ill  spare.  We  feel  that  the  story  owes  much  of  its  charm 
to  these  occasional  glimpses  of  solemn  and  affecting  sub- 
jects, which  will  not  be  hidden,  which  force  themselves 
through  the  veil,  and  appear  before  us  in  their  native  aspect. 
The  effect  is  not  unlike  that  which  is  said  to  have  been  pro- 

25  duced  on  the  ancient  stage,  when  the  eyes  of  the  actor  were 
seen  flaming  through  his  mask,  and  giving  life  and  expres- 
sion to  what  would  else  have  been  an  inanimate  and  unin- 
teresting disguise. 

It  is  very  amusing  and  very  instructive  to  compare  "  The 

30  Pilgrim's  Progress  "  with  the  "  Grace  Abounding."  The 
latter  work  is  indeed  one  of  the  most  remarkable  pieces  of 
autobiography  in  the  world.  It  is  a  full  and  open  con- 
fession of  the  fancies  which  passed  through  the  mind  of 

17-28  :  r,  n,  o  (cf.  106,  20-107,  9  )•  29-117,  6  :  c,  g. 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY  117 

an  illiterate  man,  whose  affections  were  warm,  whose 
nerves  were  irritable,  whose  imagination  was  ungovernable, 
and  who  was  under  the  influence  of  the  strongest  religious 
excitement.  In  whatever  age  Bunyan  had  lived,  the  history 
of  his  feelings  would,  in  all  probability,  have  been  very  5 
curious.  But  the  time  in  which  his  lot  was  cast  was  the  time 
of  a  great  stirring  of  the  human  mind.  A  tremendous  burst 
of  public  feeling,  produced  by  the  tyranny  of  the  hierarchy, 
menaced  the  old  ecclesiastical  institutions  with  destruction. 
To  the  gloomy  regularity  of  one  intolerant  Church  had  sue-  10 
ceeded  the  license  of  innumerable  sects,  drunk  with  the 
sweet  and  heady  must  of  their  new  liberty.  Fanaticism, 
engendered  by  persecution,  and  destined  to  engender  per- 
secution in  turn,  spread  rapidly  through  society.  Even  the 
strongest  and  most  commanding  minds  were  not  proof  15 
against  this  strange  taint.  Any  time  might  have  produced 
George  Fox  and  James  Naylor.  But  to  one  time  alone 
belong  the  frantic  delusions  of  such  a  statesman  as  Vane, 
and  the  hysterical  tears  of  such  a  soldier  as  Cromwell. 

The  history  of  Bunyan  is  the  history  of  a  most  excitable  20 
mind  in  an  age  of  excitement.    By  most  of  his  biographers 
he  has  been  treated  with  gross  injustice.    They  have  under- 
stood in  a  popular  sense  all  those  strong  terms  of  self- 
condemnation  which  he  employed  in  a  theological  sense. 
They  have,  therefore,   represented  him  as  an  abandoned  25 
wretch,  reclaimed  by  means  almost  miraculous,  or,  to  use 
their  favorite  metaphor,   "  as  a  brand  plucked   from  the 
burning."    Mr.  Ivimey  calls  him  the  depraved  Bunyan  and 
the  wicked  Tinker  of  Elstow.     Surely  Mr.  Ivimey  ought  to 
have  been  too  familiar  with  the  bitter  accusations  which  the  30 
most  pious  people  are  in  the  habit  of  bringing  against  them- 
selves,  to  understand   literally   all   the  strong  expressions 
which  are  to  be  found  in  the  "  Grace  Abounding."    It  is  quite 
6-19 :  f,  n,  c.  20-28  :  d. 


n8  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

clear,  as  Mr.  Southey  most  justly  remarks,  that  Bunyan 
never  was  a  vicious  man.  He  married  very  early;  and 
he  solemnly  declares  that  he  was  strictly  faithful  to  his  wife. 
He  does  not  appear  to  have  been  a  drunkard.  He  owns, 
5  indeed,  that,  when  a  boy,  he  never  spoke  without  an  oath. 
But  a  single  admonition  cured  him  of  this  bad  habit  for 
life;  and  the  cure  must  have  been  wrought  early;  for  at 
eighteen  he  was  in  the  army  of  the  Parliament ;  and,  if  he 
had  carried  the  vice  of  profaneness  into  that  service,  he 

10  would  doubtless  have  received  something  more  than  an  ad- 
monition from  Sergeant  Bind-their-kings-in-chains,  or  Cap- 
tain Hew-Agag-in-pieces-before-the-Lord.  Bell-ringing  and 
playing  at  hockey  on  Sundays  seem  to  have  been  the  worst 
vices  of  this  depraved  tinker.  They  would  have  passed  for 

15  virtues  with  Archbishop  Laud.  It  is  quite  clear  that,  from 
a  very  early  age,  Bunyan  was  a  man  of  strict  life  and  of 
a  tender  conscience.  "  He  had  been/'  says  Mr.  Southey, 
"  a  blackguard."  Even  this  we  think  too  hard  a  censure. 
Bunyan  was  not,  we  admit,  so  fine  a  gentleman  as  Lord 

20  Digby ;  but  he  was  a  blackguard  no  otherwise  than  as  every 
laboring  man  that  ever  lived  has  been  a  blackguard.  In- 
deed, Mr.  Southey  acknowledges  this.  "  Such  he  might 
have  been  expected  to  be  by  his  birth,  breeding,  and  voca- 
tion. Scarcely,  indeed,  by  possibility,  could  he  have  been 

25  otherwise."  A  man  whose  manners  and  sentiments  are  de- 
cidedly below  those  of  his  class  deserves  to  be  called  a 
blackguard.  But  it  is  surely  unfair  to  apply  so  strong  a 
word  of  reproach  to  one  who  is  only  what  the  great  mass 
of  every  community  must  inevitably  be. 

30  Those  horrible  internal  conflicts  which  Bunyan  has  de- 
scribed with  so  much  power  of  language  prove,  not  that  he 
was  a  worse  man  than  his  neighbors,  but  that  his  mind  was 
constantly  occupied  by  religious  considerations,  that  his 

2-12  :  c.  117,  20-118,  29  :  k,  j,  f,  n. 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY  119 

fervor  exceeded  his  knowledge,  and  that  his  imagination  ex- 
ercised despotic  power  over  his  body  and  mind.  He  heard 
voices  from  heaven.  He  saw  strange  visions  of  distant  hills, 
pleasant  and  sunny  as  his  own  Delectable  Mountains.  From 
those  abodes  he  was  shut  out,  and  placed  in  a  dark  and  hor-  5 
rible  wilderness,  where  he  wandered  through  ice  and  snow, 
striving  to  make  his  way  into  the  happy  region  of  light.  At 
one  time  he  was  seized  with  an  inclination  to  work  miracles. 
At  another  time  he  thought  himself  actually  possessed  by 
the  devil.  He  could  distinguish  the  blasphemous  whispers.  10 
He  felt  his  infernal  enemy  pulling  at  his  clothes  behind 
him.  He  spurned  with  his  feet  and  struck  with  his  hands 
at  the  destroyer.  Sometimes  he  was  tempted  to  sell  his  part 
in  the  salvation  of  mankind.  Sometimes  a  violent  impulse 
urged  him  to  start  up  from  his  food,  to  fall  on  his  knees,  15 
and  to  break  forth  into  prayer.  At  length  he  fancied  that 
he  had  committed  the  unpardonable  sin.  His  agony  con- 
vulsed his  robust  frame.  He  was,  he  says,  as  if  his  breast- 
bone would  split;  and  this  he  took  for  a  sign  that  he  was 
destined  to  burst  asunder  like  Judas.  The  agitation  of  his  20 
nerves  made  all  his  movements  tremulous;  and  this  trem- 
bling, he  supposed,  was  a  visible  mark  of  his  reprobation, 
like  that  which  had  been  set  on  Cain.  At  one  time,  indeed, 
an  encouraging  voice  seemed  to  rush  in  at  the  window,  like 
the  noise  of  wind,  but  very  pleasant,  and  commanded,  as  he  25 
says,  a  great  calm  in  his  soul.  At  another  time,  a  word  of 
comfort  "  was  spoke  loud  unto  him ;  it  showed  a  great  word ; 
it  seemed  to  be  writ  in  great  letters/'  But  these  intervals 
of  ease  were  short.  His  state,  during  two  years  and  a  half, 
was  generally  the  most  horrible  that  the  human  mind  can  30 
imagine.  "  I  walked,"  says  he,  with  his  own  peculiar  elo- 
quence, "  to  a  neighboring  town ;  and  sat  down  upon  a  settle 
in  the  street,  and  fell  into  a  very  deep  pause  about  the  most 
118, 30-119,  20:  c,  b. 


120  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

fearful  state  my  sin  had  brought  me  to;  and,  after  long 
musing,  I  lifted  up  my  head ;  but  methought  I  saw  as  if  the 
sun  that  shineth  in  the  heavens  did  grudge  to  give  me  light ; 
and  as  if  the  very  stones  in  the  street,  and  tiles  upon  the 
5  houses,  did  band  themselves  against  me.  Methought  that 
they  all  combined  together  to  banish  me  out  of  the  world. 
I  was  abhorred  of  them,  and  unfit  to  dwell  among  them, 
because  I  had  sinned  against  the  Saviour.  Oh,  how  happy 
now  was  every  creature  over  I !  for  they  stood  fast,  and  kept 

10  their  station.  But  I  was  gone  and  lost."  Scarcely  any  mad- 
house could  produce  an  instance  of  delusion  so  strong,  or 
of  misery  so  acute. 

It  was  through  this  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death,  over- 
hung by  darkness,  peopled  with  devils,  resounding  with  blas- 

15  phemy  and  lamentation,  and  passing  amidst  quagmires, 
snares,  and  pitfalls,  close  by  the  very  mouth  of  hell,  that 
Bunyan  journeyed  to  that  bright  and  fruitful  land  of 
Beulah,  in  which  he  sojourned  during  the  latter  period  of 
his  pilgrimage.  The  only  trace  which  his  cruel  sufferings 

20  and  temptations  seem  to  have  left  behind  them  was  an  affec- 
tionate compassion  for  those  who  were  still  in  the  state  in 
which  he  had  once  been.  Religion  has  scarcely  ever  worn  a 
form  so  calm  and  soothing  as  in  his  allegory.  The  feeling 
which  predominates  through  the  whole  book  is  a  feeling 

25  of  tenderness  for  weak,  timid,  and  harassed  minds.  The 
character  of  Mr.  Fearing,  of  Mr.  Feeblemind,  of  Mr.  De- 
spondency and  his  daughter  Miss  Much-afraid,  the  account 
of  poor  Littlefaith  who  was  robbed  by  the  three  thieves 
of  his  spending  money,  the  description  of  Christian's  terror 

30  in  the  dungeons  of  Giant  Despair  and  in  his  passage  through 
the  river,  all  clearly  show  how  strong  a  sympathy  Bunyan 
felt,  after  his  own  mind  had  become  clear  and  cheerful,  for 
persons  afflicted  with  religious  melancholy. 

13-23  :  a,  c,  o. 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY  121 

Mr.  Southey,  who  has  no  love  for  the  Calvinists,  admits 
that,  if  Calvinism  had  never  worn  a  blacker  appearance  than 
in  Bunyan's  works,  it  would  never  have  become  a  term  of 
reproach.  In  fact,  those  works  of  Bunyan  with  which  we 
are  acquainted  are  by  no  means  more  Calvinistic  than  the  5 
articles  and  homilies  of  the  Church  of  England.  The  mod- 
eration of  his  opinions  on  the  subject  of  predestination  gave 
offense  to  some  zealous  persons.  We  have  seen  an  absurd 
allegory,  the  heroine  of  which  is  named  Hephzibah,  written 
by  some  raving  supralapsarian  preacher  who  was  dissatis-  10 
fied  with  the  mild  theology  of  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress." 
In  this  foolish  book,  if  we  recollect  rightly,  the  Interpreter 
is  called  the  Enlightener,  and  the  House  Beautiful  is  Castle 
Strength.  Mr.  Southey  tells  us  that  the  Catholics  had  also 
their  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  without  a  Giant  Pope,  in  which  15 
the  Interpreter  is  the  Director,  and  the  House  Beautiful 
Grace's  Hall.  It  is  surely  a  remarkable  proof  of  the  power 
of  Bunyan's  genius,  that  two  religious  parties,  both  of  which 
regarded  his  opinions  as  heterodox,  should  have  had  re- 
course to  him  for  assistance.  20 

There  are,  we  think,  some  characters  and  scenes  in  "  The 
Pilgrim's  Progress,"  which  can  be  fully  comprehended  and 
enjoyed  only  by  persons  familiar  with  the  history  of  the 
times  through  which  Bunyan  lived.  The  character  of  Mr. 
Greatheart,  the  guide,  is  an  example.  His  fighting  is,  of  25 
course,  allegorical ;  but  the  allegory  is  not  strictly  preserved. 
He  delivers  a  sermon  on  imputed  righteousness  to  his  com- 
panions; and,  soon  after,  he  gives  battle  to  Giant  Grim, 
who  had  taken  upon  him  to  back  the  lions.  He  expounds 
the  fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah  to  the  household  and  30 
guests  of  Gaius ;  and  then  he  sallies  out  to  attack  Slaygood, 
who  was  of  the  nature  of  flesh-eaters,  in  his  den.  These 
are  inconsistencies ;  but  they  are  inconsistencies  which  add, 
1-20 :  j.  27-122,  8  :  c,  n. 


122  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

we  think,  to  the  interest  of  the  narrative.  We  have  not 
the  least  doubt  that  Bunyan  had  in  view  some  stout  old 
Greatheart  of  Naseby  and  Worcester,  who  prayed  with  his 
men  before  he  drilled  them,  who  knew  the  spiritual  state 

5  of  every  dragoon  in  his  troop,  and  who,  with  the  praises  of 
God  in  his  mouth,  and  a  two-edged  sword  in  his  hand, 
had  turned  to  flight,  on  many  fields  of  battle,  the  swearing, 
drunken  bravoes  of  Rupert  and  Lunsford. 

Every   age   produces   such   men   as   By-ends.     But   the 

10  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  eminently  prolific  of 
such  men.  Mr.  Southey  thinks  that  the  satire  was  aimed  at 
some  particular  individual ;  and  this  seems  by  no  means 
improbable.  At  all  events,  Bunyan  must  have  known  many 
of  those  hypocrites  who  followed  religion  only  when  re- 

15  ligion  walked  in  silver  slippers,  when  the  sun  shone,  and 
when  the  people  applauded.  Indeed,  he  might  have  easily 
found  all  the  kindred  of  By-ends  among  the  public  men  of 
his  time.  He  might  have  found  among  the  peers  my  Lord 
Turn-about,  my  Lord  Time-server,  and  my  Lord  Fair- 

20  speech;  in  the  House  of  Commons,  Mr.  Smoothman,  Mr. 
Anything,  and  Mr.  Facing-both-ways ;  nor  would  "  the  par- 
son of  the  parish,  Mr.  Two-tongues,"  have  been  wanting. 
The  town  of  Bedford  probably  contained  more  than  one 
politician  who,  after  contriving  to  raise  an  estate  by  seek- 

25  ing  the  Lord  during  the  reign  of  the  saints,  contrived  to 
keep  what  he  had  got  by  persecuting  the  saints  during  the 
reign  of  the  strumpets — and  more  than  one  priest  who, 
during  repeated  changes  in  the  discipline  and  doctrines  of 
the  Church,  had  remained  constant  to  nothing  but  his 

30  benefice. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  passages  in  "  The  Pilgrim's 
Progress  "  is  that  in  which  the  proceedings  against  Faithful 
are  described.  It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  Bunyan  in- 

18-30  :c.  31-123,  9:  c,  f,  n. 


THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY  123 

tended  to  satirize  the  mode  in  which  state  trials  were  con- 
ducted under  Charles  II.  The  license  given  to  the  witnesses 
for  the  prosecution,  the  shameless  partiality  and  ferocious 
insolence  of  the  judge,  the  precipitancy  and  the  blind  rancor 
of  the  jury,  remind  us  of  those  odious  mummeries  which,  5 
from  the  Restoration  to  the  Revolution,  were  merely  forms 
preliminary  to  hanging,  drawing,  and  quartering.  Lord 
Hategood  performs  the  office  of  counsel  for  the  prisoners 
as  well  as  Scroggs  himself  could  have  performed  it. 

Judge.    Thou   runagate,  heretic,  and  traitor,   hast  thou  10 
heard  what  these  honest  gentlemen  have  witnessed  against 
thee? 

Faithful.    May  I  speak  a  few  words  in  my  own  defense? 

Judge.    Sirrah,  sirrah!  thou  deservest  to  live  no  longer, 
but  to  be  slain  immediately  upon  the  place;  yet,  that  all  15 
men  may  see  our  gentleness  to  thee,  let  us  hear  what  thou, 
vile  runagate,  hast  to  say. 

No  person  who  knows  the  state  trials  can  be  at  a  loss 
for  parallel  cases.  Indeed,  write  what  Bunyan  would,  the 
baseness  and  cruelty  of  the  lawyers  of  those  times  "  sinned  20 
up  to  it  still,"  and  even  went  beyond  it.  The  imaginary 
trial  of  Faithful,  before  a  jury  composed  of  personified 
vices,  was  just  and  merciful,  when  compared  with  the  real 
trial  of  Alice  Lisle  before  that  tribunal  where  all  the  vices 
sat  in  the  person  of  Jeffreys.  25 

The  style  of  Bunyan  is  delightful  to  every  reader,  and 
invaluable  as  a  study  to  every  person  who  wishes  to  obtain 
a  wide  command  over  the  English  language.  The  vocabu- 
lary is  the  vocabulary  of  the  common  people.  There  is  not 
an  expression,  if  we  except  a  few  technical  terms  of  the-  30 
ology,  which  would  puzzle  the  rudest  peasant.  We  have 
observed  several  pages  which  do  not  contain  a  single  word 
of  more  than  two  syllables.  Yet  no  writer  has  said  more 

18-25 :  c. 


124  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

exactly  what  he  meant  to  say.  For  magnificence,  for 
pathos,  for  vehement  exhortation,  for  subtle  disquisition, 
for  every  purpose  of  the  poet,  the  orator,  and  the  divine, 
this  homely  dialect,  the  dialect  of  plain  working  men,  was 

5  perfectly  sufficient.  There  is  no  book  in  our  literature  on 
which  we  would  so  readily  stake  the  fame  of  the  old  un- 
polluted English  language,  no  book  which  shows  so  well 
how  rich  that  language  is  in  its  own  proper  wealth,  and 
how  little  it  has  been  improved  by  all  that  it  has  borrowed. 

10  Cowper  said,  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  that  he  dared  not 
name  John  Bunyan  in  his  verse,  for  fear  of  moving  a  sneer. 
To  our  refined  forefathers,  we  suppose,  Lord  Roscommon's 
"  Essay  on  Translated  Verse,"  and  the  Duke  of  Bucking- 
hamshire's "  Essay  on  Poetry,"  appeared  to  be  compositions 

15  infinitely  superior  to  the  allegory  of  the  preaching  tinker. 
We  live  in  better  times ;  and  we  are  not  afraid  to  say,  that, 
though  there  were  many  clever  men  in  England  during  the 
latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  there  were  only  two 
minds  which  possessed  the  imaginative  faculty  in  a  very 

20  eminent  degree.     One  of  those  minds  produced  "  Paradise 
Lost,"  the  other  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress." 
1-9  :  c,  a.  12-21 :  n. 

7,  8,  9,  n,  12,  13,  14. 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE 
1804-1864 

"  THE  SCARLET  LETTER  " 
I 

THE   PRISON-DOOR 

A  THRONG  of  bearded  men,  in  sad-colored  garments,  and 
gray,  steeple-crowned  hats,  intermixed  with  women,  some 
wearing  hoods  and  others  bareheaded,  was  assembled  in 
front  of  a  wooden  edifice,  the  door  of  which  was  heavily 
timbered  with  oak,  and  studded  with  iron  spikes.  5 

The  founders  of  a  new  colony,  whatever  Utopia  of  human 
virtue  and  happiness  they  might  originally  project,  have 
invariably  recognized  it  among  their  earliest  practical  neces- 
sities to  allot  a  portion  of  the  virgin  soil  as  a  cemetery,  and 
another  portion  as  the  site  of  a  prison.  In  accordance  with  10 
this  rule,  it  may  safely  be  assumed  that  the  forefathers  of 
Boston  had  built  the  first  prison-house  somewhere  in  the 
vicinity  of  Cornhill,  almost  as  seasonably  as  they  marked 
out  the  first  burial-ground,  on  Isaac  Johnson's  lot,  and 
round  about  his  grave,  which  subsequently  became  the  15 
nucleus  of  all  the  congregated  sepulchers  in  the  old  church- 
yard of  King's  Chapel.  Certain  it  is,  that,  some  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  after  the  settlement  of  the  town,  the  wooden 
jail  was  already  marked  with  weather-stains  and  other  indi- 
cations of  age,  which  gave  a  yet  darker  aspect  to  its  beetle-  20 
browed  and  gloomy  front.  The  rust  on  the  ponderous  iron- 
work of  its  oaken  door  looked  more  antique  than  anything 
else  in  the  New  World.  Like  all  that  pertains  to  crime, 

1-5:  b.  10-17:1,  d.  17-21  :v.  23-126,6:1. 

125 


126  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

it  seemed  never  to  have  known  a  youthful  era.  Before  this 
ugly  edifice,  and  between  it  and  the  wheel-track  of  the 
street,  was  a  grass-plot,  much  overgrown  with  burdock,  pig- 
weed, apple-peru,  and  such  unsightly  vegetation,  which  evi- 

5  dently  found  something  congenial  in  the  soil  that  had  so 
early  borne  the  black  flower  of  civilized  society,  a  prison. 
But,  on  one  side  of  the  portal,  and  rooted  almost  at  the 
threshold,  was  a  wild  rose-bush,  covered,  in  this  month 
of  June,  with  its  delicate  gems,  which  might  be  imagined 

10  to  offer  their  fragrance  and  fragile  beauty  to  the  prisoner 
as  he  went  in,  and  to  the  condemned  criminal  as  he  came 
forth  to  his  doom,  in  token  that  the  deep  heart  of  Nature 
could  pity  and  be  kind  to  him. 

This  rose-bush,  by  a  strange  chance,  has  been  kept  alive 

15  in  history ;  but  whether  it  had  merely  survived  out  of  the 
stern  old  wilderness,  so  long  after  the  fall  of  the  gigantic 
pines  and  oaks  that  originally  overshadowed  it, — or 
whether,  as  there  is  fair  authority  for  believing,  it  had 
sprung  up  under  the  footsteps  of  the  sainted  Anne  Hutchin- 

20  son,  as  she  entered  the  prison-door, — we  shall  not  take  upon 
us  to  determine.  Finding  it  so  directly  on  the  threshold  of 
our  narrative,  which  is  now  about  to  issue  from  that  inaus- 
picious portal,  we  could  hardly  do  otherwise  than  pluck  one 
of  its  flowers,  and  present  it  to  the  reader.  It  may  serve, 

25  let  us  hope,  to  symbolize  some  sweet  moral  blossom,  that 
may  be  found  along  the  track,  or  relieve  the  darkening 
close  of  a  tale  of  human  frailty  and  sorrow. 

II 

THE   MARKET-PLACE 

THE  grass-plot  before  the  jail,  in  Prison  Lane,  on  a  cer- 
tain summer  morning,  not  less  than  two  centuries  ago,  was 
7-13  :  i,  n.  21-27  :  e,  n.  28-127,  32  :  d,  m,  v  (cf.  103.  31-104,  25). 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  127 

occupied  by  a  pretty  large  number  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Boston,  all  with  their  eyes  intently  fastened  on  the  iron- 
clamped  oaken  door.  Amongst  any  other  population,  or 
at  a  later  period  in  the  history  of  New  England,  the  grim 
rigidity  that  petrified  the  bearded  physiognomies  of  these  5 
good  people  would  have  augured  some  awful  business  in 
hand.  It  could  have  betokened  nothing  short  of  the  antici- 
pated execution  of  some  noted  culprit,  on  whom  the  sen- 
tence of  a  legal  tribunal  had  but  confirmed  the  verdict  of 
public  sentiment.  But,  in  that  early  seventy  of  the  Puritan  10 
character,  an  inference  of  this  kind  could  not  so  indubitably 
be  drawn.  It  might  be  that  a  sluggish  bond-servant,  or  an 
undutiful  child,  whom  his  parents  had  given  over  to  the 
civil  authority,  was  to  be  corrected  at  the  whipping-post. 
It  might  be,  that  an  Antinomian,  a  Quaker,  or  other  15 
heterodox  religionist  was  to  be  scourged  out  of  the  town,  or 
an  idle  and  vagrant  Indian,  whom  the  white  man's  fire- 
water had  made  riotous  about  the  streets,  was  to  be  driven 
with  stripes  into  the  shadow  of  the  forest.  It  might  be,  too, 
that  a  witch,  like  old  Mistress  Hibbins,  the  bitter-tempered  20 
widow  of  the  magistrate,  was  to  die  upon  the  gallows.  In 
either  case,  there  was  very  much  the  same  solemnity  of 
demeanor  on  the  part  of  the  spectators ;  as  befitted  a  people 
amongst  whom  religion  and  law  were  almost  identical,  and 
in  whose  character  both  were  so  thoroughly  interfused,  that  25 
the  mildest  and  the  severest  acts  of  public  discipline  were 
alike  made  venerable  and  awful.  Meager,  indeed,  and  cold 
was  the  sympathy  that  a  transgressor  might  look  for  from 
such  by-standers,  at  the  scaffold.  On  the  other  hand,  a 
penalty,  which,  in  our  days,  would  infer  a  degree  of  mock-  30 
ing  infamy  and  ridicule,  might  then  be  invested  with  almost 
as  stern  a  dignity  as  the  punishment  of  death  itself. 

It  was  a  circumstance  to  be  noted,  on  the  summer  morn- 
29-32 :  i. 


128  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

ing  when  our  story  begins  its  course,  that  the  women,  of 
whom  there  were  several  in  the  crowd,  appeared  to  take 
a  peculiar  interest  in  whatever  penal  infliction  might  be 
expected  to  ensue.  The  age  had  not  so  much  refinement, 

5  that  any  sense  of  impropriety  restrained  the  wearers  of 
petticoat  and  farthingale  from  stepping  forth  into  the  public 
ways,  and  wedging  their  not  unsubstantial  persons,  if  occa- 
sion were,  into  the  throng  nearest  to  the  scaffold  at  an 
execution.  Morally,  as  well  as  materially,  there  was  a 

10  coarser  fiber  in  those  wives  and  maidens  of  old  English 
birth  and  breeding,  than  in  their  fair  descendants,  separated 
from  them  by  a  series  of  six  or  seven  generations;  for, 
throughout  that  chain  of  ancestry,  every  successive  mother 
has  transmitted  to  her  child  a  fainter  bloom,  a  more  delicate 

15  and  briefer  beauty,  and  a  slighter  physical  frame,  if  not 
a  character  of  less  force  and  solidity,  than  her  own.  The 
women  who  were  now  standing  about  the  prison-door  stood 
within  less  than  half  a  century  of  the  period  when  the  man- 
like Elizabeth  had  been  the  not  altogether  unsuitable  repre- 

2osentative  of  the  sex.  They  were  her  countrywomen;  and 
the  beef  and  ale  of  their  native  land,  with  a  moral  diet  not 
a  whit  more  refined,  entered  largely  into  their  composition. 
The  bright  morning  sun,  therefore,  shone  on  broad  shoul- 
ders and  well-developed  busts,  and  on  round  and  ruddy 

25  cheeks,  that  had  ripened  in  the  far-off  island,  and  had 
hardly  yet  grown  paler  or  thinner  in  the  atmosphere  of 
New  England.  There  was,  moreover,  a  boldness  and 
rotundity  of  speech  among  these  matrons,  as  most  of  them 
seemed  to  be,  that  would  startle  us  at  the  present  day, 

30  whether  in  respect  to  its  purport  or  its  volume  of  tone. 

"  Goodwives,"  said  a  hard-featured  dame  of  fifty,  "  I'll 
tell  ye  a  piece  of  my  mind.  It  would  be  greatly  for  the 
public  behoof,  if  we  women,  being  of  mature  age  and 

4-9  :  i,  w.  9-12  :  t.  9-16  :  i,  c.  23-27  :  t,  e.  27-30  :  i. 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  129 

church-members  in  good  repute,  should  have  the  handling 
of  such  malefactresses  as  this  Hester  Prynne.  What  think 
ye,  gossips?  If  the  hussy  stood  up  for  judgment  before  us 
five,  that  are  now  here  in  a  knot  together,  would  she  come 
off  with  such  a  sentence  as  the  worshipful  magistrates  have  5 
awarded  ?  Marry,  I  trow  not !  "  1 

"  Mercy  on  us,  goodwife,"  exclaimed  a  man  in  the  crowd, 
"  is  there  no  virtue  in  woman,  save  what  springs  from  a 
wholesome  fear  of  the  gallows?    That  is  the  hardest  word 
yet!     Hush,  now,  gossips!  for  the  lock  is  turning  in  the  10 
prison-door,  and  here  comes  Mistress  Prynne  herself." 

The  door  of  the  jail  being  flung  open  from  within,  there 
appeared,  in  the  first  place,  like  a  black  shadow  emerging 
into  sunshine,  the  grim  and  grisly  presence  of  the  town- 
beadle,  with  a  sword  by  his  side,  and  his  staff  of  office  in  15 
his  hand.  This  personage  prefigured  and  represented  in  his 
aspect  the  whole  dismal  severity  of  the  Puritanic  code  of 
law,  which  it  was  his  business  to  administer  in  its  final  and 
closest  application  to  the  offender.  Stretching  forth  the  of- 
ficial staff  in  his  left  hand,  he  laid  his  right  upon  the  20 
shoulder  of  a  young  woman,  whom  he  thus  drew  forward ; 
until,  on  the  threshold  of  the  prison-door,  she  repelled  him, 
by  an  action  marked  with  natural  dignity  and  force  of 
character,  and  stepped  into  the  open  air,  as  if  by  her  own 
free  will.  She  bore  in  her  arms  a  child,  a  baby  of  some  25 
three  months  old,  who  winked  and  turned  aside  its  little 
face  from  the  too  vivid  light  of  day;  because  its  existence, 
heretofore,  had  brought  it  acquainted  only  with  the  gray 
twilight  of  a  dungeon,  or  other  darksome  apartment  of  the 
prison.  30 

1  Dialogue  is  omitted  as  not  being  representative  of  the  author's 
own  style. 

i2-i6:t.  19-30 :  a,  j. 


130  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

When  the  young  woman — the  mother  of  this  child — 
stood  fully  revealed  before  the  crowd,  it  seemed  to  be  her 
first  impulse  to  clasp  the  infant  closely  to  her  bosom;  not 
so  much  by  an  impulse  of  motherly  affection,  as  that  she 
5  might  thereby  conceal  a  certain  token,  which  was  wrought 
or  fastened  into  her  dress.  In  a  moment,  however,  wisely 
judging  that  one  token  of  her  shame  would  but  poorly 
serve  to  hide  another,  she  took  the  baby  on  her  arm,  and, 
with  a  burning  blush,  and  yet  a  haughty  smile,  and  a  glance 

10  that  would  not  be  abashed,  looked  around  at  her  towns- 
people and  neighbors.  On  the  breast  of  her  gown,  in  fine 
red  cloth,  surrounded  with  an  elaborate  embroidery  and 
fantastic  flourishes  of  gold-thread,  appeared  the  letter  A.  It 
was  so  artistically  done,  and  with  so  much  fertility  and 

*5  gorgeous  luxuriance  of  fancy,  that  it  had  all  the  effect  of 
a  last  and  fitting  decoration  to  the  apparel  which  she  wore ; 
and  which  was  of  a  splendor  in  accordance  with  the  taste 
of  the  age,  but  greatly  beyond  what  was  allowed  by  the 
sumptuary  regulations  of  the  colony. 

20  The  young  woman  was  tall,  with  a  figure  of  perfect  ele- 
gance on  a  large  scale.  She  had  dark  and  abundant  hair, 
so  glossy  that  it  threw  off  the  sunshine  with  a  gleam,  and  a 
face  which,  besides  being  beautiful  from  regularity  of  fea- 
ture and  richness  of  complexion,  had  the  impressiveness  be- 

25  longing  to  a  marked  brow  and  deep  black  eyes.  She  was 
lady-like,  too,  after  the  manner  of  the  feminine  gentility  of 
those  days;  characterized  by  a  certain  state  and  dignity, 
rather  than  by  the  delicate,  evanescent,  and  indescribable 
grace,  which  is  now  recognized  as  its  indication.  And  never 

30  had  Hester  Prynne  appeared  more  lady-like,  in  the  antique 
interpretation  of  the  term,  than  as  she  issued  from  the 
prison.  Those  who  had  before  known  her,  and  had  ex- 
pected to  behold  her  dimmed  and  obscured  by  a  disastrous 

1-19  :d.  20-29  :d.  29-131,  17:  v. 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  131 

cloud,  were  astonished,  and  even  startled,  to  perceive  how 
her  beauty  shone  out,  and  made  a  halo  of  the  misfortune 
and  ignominy  in  which  she  was  enveloped.  It  may  be  true, 
that,  to  a  sensitive  observer,  there  was  something  ex- 
quisitely painful  in  it.  Her  attire,  which,  indeed,  she  had  5 
wrought  for  the  occasion,  in  prison,  and  had  modeled  much 
after  her  own  fancy,  seemed  to  express  the  attitude  of  her 
spirit,  the  desperate  recklessness  of  her  mood,  by  its  wild 
and  picturesque  peculiarity.  But  the  point  which  drew  all 
eyes,  and,  as  it  were,  transfigured  the  wearer, — so  that  both  10 
men  and  women,  who  had  been  familiarly  acquainted  with 
Hester  Prynne,  were  now  impressed  as  if  they  beheld  her 
for  the  first  time, — was  that  SCARLET  LETTER,  so  fantas- 
tically embroidered  and  illuminated  upon  her  bosom.  It 
had  the  effect  of  a  spell,  taking  her  out  of  the  ordinary  15 
relations  with  humanity,  and  inclosing  her  in  a  sphere  by 
herself. 

The  grim  beadle  now  made  a  gesture  with  his  staff. 
"  Make   way,   good   people,   make   way,   in   the   King's 
name !  "  cried  he.  20 

A  lane  was  forthwith  opened  through  the  crowd  of  spec- 
tators. Preceded  by  the  beadle,  and  attended  by  an  irregu- 
lar procession  of  stern-browed  men  and  unkindly  visaged 
women,  Hester  Prynne  set  forth  towards  the  place  ap- 
pointed for  her  punishment.  A  crowd  of  eager  and  curious  25 
school-boys,  understanding  little  of  the  matter  in  hand, 
except  that  it  gave  them  a  half-holiday,  ran  before  her 
progress,  turning  their  heads  continually  to  stare  into  her 
face,  and  at  the  winking  baby  in  her  arms,  and  at  the 
ignominious  letter  on  her  breast.  It  was  no  great  distance,  30 
in  those  days,  from  the  prison-door  to  the  market-place. 
Measured  by  the  prisoner's  experience,  however,  it  might 
21 :  b.  25-30 :  b  (cf.  22).  30,  31 :  b.  32-132,  13  :  m. 


132  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

be  reckoned  a  journey  of  some  length ;  for,  haughty  as  her 
demeanor  was,  she  perchance  underwent  an  agony  from 
every  footstep  of  those  that  thronged  to  see  her,  as  if  her 
heart  had  been  flung  into  the  street  for  them  all  to  spurn 
5  and  trample  upon.  In  our  nature,  however,  there  is  a  pro- 
vision, alike  marvelous  and  merciful,  that  the  sufferer 
should  never  know  the  intensity  of  what  he  endures  by  its 
present  torture,  but  chiefly  by  the  pang  that  rankles  after 
it.  With  almost  a  serene  deportment,  therefore,  Hester 

10  Prynne  passed  through  this  portion  of  her  ordeal,  and  came 
to  a  sort  of  scaffold,  at  the  western  extremity  of  the  market- 
place. It  stood  nearly  beneath  the  eaves  of  Boston's  earliest 
church,  and  appeared  to  be  a  fixture  there. 

In  fact,  this  scaffold  constituted  a  portion  of  a  penal 

15  machine,  which  now,  for  two  or  three  generations  past,  has 
been  merely  historical  and  traditionary  among  us,  but  was 
held,  in  the  old  time,  to  be  as  effectual  an  agent,  in  the 
promotion  of  good  citizenship,  as  ever  was  the  guillotine 
among  the  terrorists  of  France.  It  was,  in  short,  the  plat- 

20  form  of  the  pillory ;  and  above  it  rose  the  framework  of 
that  instrument  of  discipline,  so  fashioned  as  to  confine  the 
human  head  in  its  tight  grasp,  and  thus  holding  it  up  to  the 
public  gaze.  The  very  ideal  of  ignominy  was  embodied 
and  made  manifest  in  this  contrivance  of  wood  and  iron. 

25  There  can  be  no  outrage,  methinks,  against  our  common 
nature, — whatever  be  the  delinquencies  of  the  individual, — 
no  outrage  more  flagrant  than  to  forbid  the  culprit  to  hide 
his  face  for  shame ;  as  it  was  the  essence  of  this  punishment 
to  do.  In  Hester  Prynne's  instance,  however,  as  not  infre- 

30  quently  in  other  cases,  her  sentence  bore,  that  she  should 
stand  a  certain  time  upon  the  platform,  but  without  under- 
going that  gripe  about  the  neck  and  confinement  of  the 
head,  the  proneness  to  which  was  the  most  devilish  char- 

14-19  :  w  (cf.  105,  26-31).  29-133,  4  :  n. 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  133 

acteristic  of  this  ugly  engine.  Knowing  well  her  part,  she 
ascended  a  flight  of  wooden  steps,  and  was  thus  displayed 
to  the  surrounding  multitude,  at  about  the  height  of  a  man's 
shoulders  above  the  street. 

Had  there  been  a  Papist  among  the  crowd  of  Puritans,  5 
he  might  have  seen  in  this  beautiful  woman,  so  picturesque 
in  her  attire  and  mien,  and  with  the  infant  at  her  bosom, 
an  object  to  remind  him  of  the  image  of  Divine  Maternity, 
which  so  many  illustrious  painters  have  vied  with  one  an- 
other to  represent;  something  which  should  remind  him,  10 
indeed,  but  only  by  contrast,  of  that  sacred  image  of  sinless 
motherhood,  whose  infant  was  to  redeem  the  world.    Here, 
there  was  the  taint  of  deepest  sin  in  the  most  sacred  quality 
of  human  life,  working  such  effect,  that  the  world  was  only 
the  darker  for  this  woman's  beauty,  and  the  more  lost  for  15 
the  infant  that  she  had  borne. 

The  scene  was  not  without  a  mixture  of  awe,  such  as 
must  always  invest  the  spectacle  of  guilt  and  shame  in  a 
fellow-creature,  before  society  shall  have  grown  corrupt 
enough  to  smile,  instead  of  shuddering,  at  it.  The  wit-  20 
nesses  of  Hester  Prynne's  disgrace  had  not  yet  passed  be- 
yond their  simplicity.  They  were  stern  enough  to  look 
upon  her  death,  had  that  been  the  sentence,  without  a 
murmur  at  its  severity,  but  had  none  of  the  heartlessness 
of  another  social  state,  which  would  find  only  a  theme  for  25 
jest  in  an  exhibition  like  the  present.  Even  had  there  been 
a  disposition  to  turn  the  matter  into  ridicule,  it  must  have 
been  repressed  and  overpowered  by  the  solemn  presence  of 
men  no  less  dignified  than  the  Governor,  and  several  of 
his  counselors,  a  judge,  a  general,  and  the  ministers  of  the  30 
town ;  all  of  whom  sat  or  stood  in  a  balcony  of  the  meeting- 
house, looking  down  upon  the  platform.  When  such  per- 
sonages could  constitute  a  part  of  the  spectacle,  without 
5-16 :  f,  c,  n.  22-134,  3  :  d. 


134  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

risking  the  majesty  or  reverence  of  rank  and  office,  it  was 
safely  to  be  inferred  that  the  infliction  of  a  legal  sentence 
would  have  an  earnest  and  effectual  meaning.  Accord- 
ingly, the  crowd  was  somber  and  grave.  The  unhappy 
5  culprit  sustained  herself  as  best  a  woman  might,  under  the 
heavy  weight  of  a  thousand  unrelenting  eyes,  all  fastened 
upon  her,  and  concentrated  at  her  bosom.  It  was  almost 
intolerable  to  be  borne.  Of  an  impulsive  and  passionate 
nature,  she  had  fortified  herself  to  encounter  the  stings  and 

10  venomous  stabs  of  public  contumely,  wreaking  itself  in 
every  variety  of  insult;  but  there  was  a  quality  so  much 
more  terrible  in  the  solemn  mood  of  the  popular  mind,  that 
she  longed  rather  to  behold  all  those  rigid  countenances 
contorted  with  scornful  merriment,  and  herself  the  object. 

15  Had  a  roar  of  laughter  burst  from  the  multitude, — each 
man,  each  woman,  each  little  shrill-voiced  child,  contribut- 
ing their  individual  parts, — Hester  Prynne  might  have 
repaid  them  all  with  a  bitter  and  disdainful  smile.  But, 
under  the  leaden  infliction  which  it  was  her  doom  to  endure, 

20  she  felt,  at  moments,  as  if  she  must  needs  shriek  out  with 
the  full  power  of  her  lungs,  and  cast  herself  from  the  scaf- 
fold down  upon  the  ground,  or  else  go  mad  at  once. 

Yet  there  were  intervals  when  the  whole  scene,  in  which 
she  was  the  most  conspicuous  object,  seemed  to  vanish  from 

25  her  eyes,  or,  at  least,  glimmered  indistinctly  before  them, 
like  a  mass  of  imperfectly  shaped  and  spectral  images.  Her 
mind,  and  especially  her  memory,  was  preternaturally 
active,  and  kept  bringing  up  other  scenes  than  this  roughly 
hewn  street  of  a  little  town,  on  the  edge  of  the  Western 

30  wilderness ;  other  faces  than  were  lowering  upon  her  from 
beneath  the  brims  of  those  steeple-crowned  hats.  Reminis- 
cences the  most  trifling  and  immaterial,  passages  of  infancy 
and  school-days,  sports,  childish  quarrels,  and  the  little  do- 

3,4:b.  7,  8:b.   15-18:0.  26-135,5:0^. 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  135 

mestic  traits  of  her  maiden  years,  came  swarming  back 
upon  her,  intermingled  with  recollections  of  whatever  was 
gravest  in  her  subsequent  life ;  one  picture  precisely  as  vivid 
as  another ;  as  if  all  were  of  similar  importance,  or  all  alike 
a  play.  Possibly,  it  was  an  instinctive  device  of  her  spirit,  5 
to  relieve  itself,  by  the  exhibition  of  these  phantasmagoric 
forms,  from  the  cruel  weight  and  hardness  of  the  reality. 

Be  that  as  it  might,  the  scaffold  of  the  pillory  was  a  point 
of  view  that  revealed  to  Hester  Prynne  the  entire  track 
along  which  she  had  been  treading  since  her  happy  infancy.  10 
Standing  on  that  miserable  eminence,  she  saw  again  her 
native  village,  in  Old  England,  and  her  paternal  home;  a 
decayed  house  of  gray  stone,  with  a  poverty-stricken  aspect, 
but  retaining  a  half-obliterated  shield  of  arms  over  the 
portal,  in  token  of  antique  gentility.  She  saw  her  father's  15 
face,  with  its  bald  brow,  and  reverend  white  beard,  that 
flowed  over  the  old-fashioned  Elizabethan  ruff;  her 
mother's,  too,  with  the  look  of  heedful  and  anxious  love 
which  it  always  wore  in  her  remembrance,  and  which,  even 
since  her  death,  had  so  often  laid  the  impediment  of  a  gentle  20 
remonstrance  in  her  daughter's  pathway.  She  saw  her  own 
face,  glowing  with  girlish  beauty,  and  illuminating  all  the 
interior  of  the  dusky  mirror  in  which  she  had  been  wont 
to  gaze  at  it.  There  she  beheld  another  countenance,  of 
a  man  well  stricken  in  years,  a  pale,  thin,  scholar-like  visage,  25 
with  eyes  dim  and  bleared  by  the  lamplight  that  had  served 
them  to  pore  over  many  ponderous  books.  Yet  those  same 
bleared  optics  had  a  strange,  penetrating  power,  when  it 
was  their  owner's  purpose  to  read  the  human  soul.  This 
figure  of  the  study  and  the  cloister,  as  Hester  Prynne's  30 
womanly  fancy  failed  not  to  recall,  was  slightly  deformed, 
with  the  left  shoulder  a  trifle  higher  than  the  right.  Next 
rose  before  her,  in  memory's  picture-gallery,  the  intricate 

5-7  :  d,  n.  11-24  :  v.  32-136,  12  :  o,  e,  a  (cf.  120,  13-33). 


136  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

and  narrow  thoroughfares,  the  tall,  gray  houses,  the  huge 
cathedrals,  and  the  public  edifices,  ancient  in  date  and 
quaint  in  architecture,  of  a  Continental  city;  where  a  new 
life  had  awaited  her,  still  in  connection  with  the  misshapen 

5  scholar ;  a  new  life,  but  feeding  itself  on  time-worn  ma- 
terials, like  a  tuft  of  green  moss  on  a  crumbling  wall. 
Lastly,  in  lieu  of  these  shifting  scenes,  came  back  the  rude 
market-place  of  the  Puritan  settlement,  with  all  the  towns- 
people assembled  and  leveling  their  stern  regards  at  Hester 

10  Prynne, — yes,  at  herself, — who  stood  on  the  scaffold  of  the 

pillory,  an  infant  on  her  arm,  and  the  letter  A,  in  scarlet, 

fantastically  embroidered  with  gold-thread,  upon  her  bosom ! 

Could  it  be  true?     She  clutched  the  child  so  fiercely  to 

her  breast,  that  it  sent  forth  a  cry;  she  turned  her  eyes 

15  downward  at  the  scarlet  letter,  and  even  touched  it  with 
her  finger,  to  assure  herself  that  the  infant  and  the  shame 
were  real.  Yes! — these  were  her  realities, — all  else  had 
vanished ! 

Ill 

THE   RECOGNITION 

FROM  this  intense  consciousness  of  being  the  object  of 
20  severe  and  universal  observation,  the  wearer  of  the  scarlet 
letter  was  at  length  relieved,  by  discerning,  on  the  outskirts 
of  the  crowd,  a  figure  which  irresistibly  took  possession  of 
her  thoughts.    An  Indian,  in  his  native  garb,  was  standing 
there;  but  the  red  men  were  not  so  infrequent  visitors  of 
25  the  English  settlements,  that  one  of  them  would  have  at- 
tracted any  notice  from  Hester  Prynne  at  such  a  time; 
much  less  would  he  have  excluded  all  other  objects  and 
ideas  from  her  mind.    By  the  Indian's  side,  and  evidently 
sustaining  a  companionship  with  him,  stood  a  white  man, 
30  clad  in  a  strange  disarray  of  civilized  and  savage  costume. 

13-18:  n.  19-28:  h. 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  137 

He  was  small  in  stature,  with  a  furrowed  visage,  which, 
as  yet,  could  hardly  be  termed  aged.  There  was  a  remarka- 
ble intelligence  in  his  features,  as  of  a  person  who  had  so 
cultivated  his  mental  part  that  it  could  not  fail  to  mold  the 
physical  to  itself,  and  become  manifest  by  unmistakable  5 
tokens.  Although,  by  a  seemingly  careless  arrangement  of 
his  heterogeneous  garb,  he  had  endeavored  to  conceal  or 
abate  the  peculiarity,  it  was  sufficiently  evident  to  Hester 
Prynne  that  one  of  this  man's  shoulders  rose  higher  than 
the  other.  Again,  at  the  first  instant  of  perceiving  that  thin  10 
visage,  and  the  slight  deformity  of  the  figure,  she  pressed 
her  infant  to  her  bosom  with  so  convulsive  a  force  that  the 
poor  babe  uttered  another  cry  of  pain.  But  the  mother  did 
not  seem  to  hear  it. 

At  his  arrival  in  the  market-place,  and  some  time  before  15 
she  saw  him,  the  stranger  had  bent  his  eyes  on  Hester 
Prynne.    It  was  carelessly,  at  first,  like  a  man  chiefly  accus- 
tomed to  look  inward,  and  to  whom  external  matters  are  of 
little  value  and  import,  unless  they  bear  relation  to  some- 
thing within  his  mind.     Very  soon,  however,  his  look  be-  20 
came  keen  and  penetrative.    A  writhing  horror  twisted  itself 
across  his  features,  like  a  snake  gliding  swiftly  over  them, 
and  making  one  little  pause,  with  all  its  wreathed  inter- 
volutions  in  open    sight.    His  face  darkened  with  some 
powerful  emotion,  which,  nevertheless,  he  so  instantane-  25 
ously  controlled  by  an  effort  of  his  will,  that,  save  at  a 
single  moment,  its  expression  might  have  passed  for  calm- 
ness.   After  a  brief  space,  the  convulsion  grew  almost  im- 
perceptible,  and   finally   subsided   into  the   depths   of  his 
nature.     When  he  found  the  eyes  of  Hester  Prynne  fas-  30 
tened  on  his  own,  and  saw  that  she  appeared  to  recognize 
him,  he  slowly  and  calmly  raised  his  finger,  made  a  gesture 
with  it  in  the  air,  and  laid  it  on  his  lips. 

1-14  :h.  13,  14  :b.  17-20:!.  21-24:6. 
6,  7,  8,  9,  10,   n,   12,   13,  14. 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 
1803-1882 

GIFTS 

Gifts  of  one  who  loved  me, — 
'Twas  high  time  they  came : 
When  he  ceased  to  love  me, 
Time  they  stopped  for  shame. 

IT  is  said  that  the  world  is  in  a  state  of  bankruptcy, 
that  the  world  owes  the  world  more  than  the  world  can 
pay,  and  ought  to  go  into  chancery,  and  be  sold.  I  do  not 
think  this  general  insolvency,  which  involves  in  some  sort 

5  all  the  population,  to  be  the  reason  of  the  difficulty  experi- 
enced at  Christmas  and  New  Year,  and  other  times,  in  be- 
stowing gifts ;  since  it  is  always  so  pleasant  to  be  generous, 
though  very  vexatious  to  pay  debts.  But  the  impediment 
lies  in  the  choosing.  If,  at  any  time,  it  comes  into  my  head, 

10  that  a  present  is  due  from  me  to  somebody,  I  am  puzzled 
what  to  give,  until  the  opportunity  is  gone.  Flowers  and 
fruits  are  always  fit  presents;  flowers,  because  they  are  a 
proud  assertion  that  a  ray  of  beauty  outvalues  all  the  utili- 
ties of  the  world.  These  gay  natures  contrast  with  the 

15  somewhat  stern  countenance  of  ordinary  nature:  they  are 
like  music  heard  out  of  a  workhouse.  Nature  does  not 
cocker  us :  we  are  children,  not  pets :  she  is  not  fond :  every- 
thing is  dealt  to  us  without  fear  or  favor,  after  severe  uni- 
versal laws.  Yet  these  delicate  flowers  look  like  the  frolic 

20  and  interference  of  love  and  beauty.  Men  use  to  tell  us 
that  we  love  flattery,  even  though  we  are  not  deceived  by 

n-i6:q.  16-19:1.  19-139*  9  :  v,  k. 
138 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  139 

it,  because  it  shows  that  we  are  of  importance  enough  to  be 
courted.  Something  like  that  pleasure,  the  flowers  give  us : 
what  am  I  to  whom  these  sweet  hints  are  addressed? 
Fruits  are  acceptable  gifts,  because  they  are  the  flower  of 
commodities,  and  admit  of  fantastic  values  being  attached  5 
to  them.  If  a  man  should  send  to  me  to  come  a  hundred 
miles  to  visit  him,  and  should  set  before  me  a  basket  of  fine 
summer-fruit,  I  should  think  there  was  some  proportion 
between  the  labor  and  the  reward. 

For  common  gifts,  necessity  makes  pertinences  and  beauty  10 
every  day,  and  one  is  glad  when  an  imperative  leaves  him 
no  option,  since  if  the  man  at  the  door  have  no  shoes,  you 
have  not  to  consider  whether  you  could  procure  him  a 
paint-box.     And  as  it  is  always  pleasing  to  see  a  man  eat 
bread,  or  drink  water,  in  the  house  or  out  of  doors,  so  it  15 
is  always  a  great  satisfaction  to  supply  these  first  wants. 
Necessity  does  everything  well.     In  our  condition  of  uni- 
versal dependence,  it  seems  heroic  to  let  the  petitioner  be 
the  judge  of  his  necessity,  and  to  give  all  that  is  asked, 
though  at  great  inconvenience.     If  it  be  a  fantastic  desire,  20 
it  is  better  to  leave  to  others  the  office  of  punishing  him.    I 
can  think  of  many  parts  I  should  prefer  playing  to  that  of 
the  Furies.    Next  to  things  of  necessity,  the  rule  for  a  gift, 
which  one  of  my  friends  prescribed,  is  that  we  might  convey 
to  some  person  that  which  properly  belonged  to  his  char-  25 
acter,  and  was  easily  associated  with  him  in  thought.     But 
our  tokens  of  compliment  and  love  are  for  the  most  part 
barbarous.    Rings  and  other  jewels  are  not  gifts,  but  apolo- 
gies for  gifts.    The  only  gift  is  a  portion  of  thyself.    Thou 
must  bleed  for  me.     Therefore  the  poet  brings  his  poem;  30 
the  shepherd,  his  lamb ;  the  farmer,  corn ;  the  miner,  a  gem ; 
the  sailor,  coral  and  shells ;  the  painter,  his  picture ;  the  girl, 
a  handkerchief  of  her  own  sewing.    This  is  right  and  pleas- 

10-28  :  b,  v,  j.  28-33  :  b.  28-140,  9  :  a  (cf.  125-137). 


140  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

ing,  for  it  restores  society  in  so  far  to  its  primary  basis, 
when  a  man's  biography  is  conveyed  in  his  gift,  and  every 
man's  wealth  is  an  index  of  his  merit.  But  it  is  a  cold, 
lifeless  business  when  you  go  to  the  shops  to  buy  me  some- 

5  thing,  which  does  not  represent  your  life  and  talent,  but  a 
goldsmith's.  This  is  fit  for  kings,  and  rich  men  who  repre- 
sent kings  and  a  false  state  of  property,  to  make  presents 
of  gold  and  silver  stuffs,  as  a  kind  of  symbolical  sin- 
offering,  or  payment  of  blackmail. 

10  The  law  of  benefits  is  a  difficult  channel,  which  requires 
careful  sailing,  or  rude  boats.  It  is  not  the  office  of  a  man 
to  receive  gifts.  How  dare  you  give  them?  We  wish  to 
be  self-sustained.  We  do  not  quite  forgive  a  giver.  The 
hand  that  feeds  us  is  in  some  danger  of  being  bitten.  We 

15  can  receive  anything  from  love,  for  that  is  a  way  of  receiv- 
ing it  from  ourselves;  but  not  from  anyone  who  assumes 
to  bestow.  We  sometimes  hate  the  meat  which  we  eat, 
because  there  seems  something  of  degrading  dependence  in 
living  by  it. 

20  "  Brother,  if  Jove  to  thee  a  present  make, 

Take  heed  that  from  his  hands  thou  nothing  take." 

We  ask  the  whole.  Nothing  less  will  content  us.  We  ar- 
raign society,  if  it  do  not  give  us  besides  earth,  and  fire,  and 
water,  opportunity,  love,  reverence,  and  objects  of  venera- 

25  tion. 

He  is  a  good  man,  who  can  receive  a  gift  well.  We  are 
either  glad  or  sorry  at  a  gift,  and  both  emotions  are  unbe- 
coming. Some  violence,  I  think,  is  done,  some  degradation 
borne,  when  I  rejoice  or  grieve  at  a  gift.  I  am  sorry  when 

30  my  independence  is  invaded,  or  when  a  gift  conies  from 
such  as  do  not  know  my  spirit,  and  so  the  act  is  not  sup- 
ported ;  and  if  the  gift  pleases  me  overmuch,  then  I  should  be 
10-19:6,  k.  26-141,  23:  J. 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  141 

ashamed  that  the  donor  should  read  my  heart,  and  see  that  I 
love  his  commodity  and  not  him.  The  gift  to  be  true,  must 
be  the  flowing  of  the  giver  unto  me,  correspondent  to  my 
flowing  unto  him.  When  the  waters  are  at  level,  then  my 
goods  pass  to  him,  and  his  to  me.  All  his  are  mine,  all  mine  5 
his.  I  say  to  him,  How  can  you  give  me  this  pot  of  oil, 
or  this  flagon  of  wine,  when  all  your  oil  and  wine  is  mine, 
which  belief  of  mine  this  gift  seems  to  deny?  Hence  the 
fitness  of  beautiful,  not  useful  things  for  gifts.  This  giving 
is  flat  usurpation,  and  therefore  when  the  beneficiary  is  un-  10 
grateful,  as  all  beneficiaries  hate  all  Timons,  not  at  all  con- 
sidering the  value  of  the  gift,  but  looking  back  to  the  greater 
store  it  was  taken  from,  I  rather  sympathize  with  the  bene- 
ficiary, than  with  the  anger  of  my  lord  Timon.  For,  the 
expectation  of  gratitude  is  mean,  and  is  continually  punished  15 
by  the  total  insensibility  of  the  obliged  person.  It  is  a  great 
happiness  to  get  off  without  injury  and  heart-burning,  from 
one  who  has  had  the  ill  luck  to  be  served  by  you.  It  is  a 
very  onerous  business,  this  of  being  served,  and  the  debtor 
naturally  wishes  to  give  you  a  slap.  A  golden  text  for  20 
these  gentlemen  is  that  which  I  so  admire  in  the  Buddhist, 
who  never  thanks,  and  who  says,  "  Do  not  flatter  your  bene- 
factors/' 

The  reason  of  these  discords  I  conceive  to  be,  that  there 
is  no  commensurability  between  a  man  and  any  gift.    You  25 
cannot  give  anything  to  a  magnanimous  person.    After  you 
have  served  him,  he  at  once  puts  you  in  debt  by  his  mag- 
nanimity.    The  service  a  man  renders  his  friend  is  trivial 
and  selfish,  compared  with  the  service  he  knows  his  friend 
stood  in  readiness  to  yield  him,  alike  before  he  had  begun  to  30 
serve  his  friend,  and  now  also.    Compared  with  that  good- 
will I  bear  my  friend,  the  benefit  it  is  in  my  power  to  render 
him  seems  small.    Besides,  our  action  on  each  other,  good 

24-142,  8 :  k. 


142  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

as  well  as  evil,  is  so  incidental  and  at  random,  that  we  can 
seldom  hear  the  acknowledgments  of  any  person  who  would 
thank  us  for  a  benefit  without  some  shame  and  humiliation. 
We  can  rarely  strike  a  direct  stroke,  but  must  be  content 

5  with  an  oblique  one ;  we  seldom  have  the  satisfaction  of 
yielding  a  direct  benefit,  which  is  directly  received.  But 
rectitude  scatters  favors  on  every  side  without  knowing  it, 
and  receives  with  wonder  the  thanks  of  all  people. 

I  fear  to  breathe  any  treason  against  the  majesty  of  love, 

10  which  is  the  genius  and  god  of  gifts,  and  to  whom  we  must 
not  affect  to  prescribe.  Let  him  give  kingdoms  or  flower- 
leaves  indifferently.  There  are  persons  from  whom  we 
always  expect  fairy  tokens ;  let  us  not  cease  to  expect  them. 
This  is  prerogative,  and  not  to  be  limited  by  our  municipal 

15  rules.  For  the  rest,  I  like  to  see  that  we  cannot  be  bought 
and  sold.  The  best  of  hospitality  and  of  generosity  is  also 
not  in  the  will  but  in  fate.  I  find  that  I  am  not  much  to 
you :  you  do  not  need  me ;  you  do  not  feel  me ;  then  am  I 
thrust  out  of  doors,  though  you  proffer  me  house  and  lands. 

20  No  services  are  of  any  value,  but  only  likeness.  When  I 
have  attempted  to  join  myself  to  others  by  services,  it 
proved  an  intellectual  trick, — no  more.  They  eat  your 
service  like  apples,  and  leave  you  out.  But  love  them,  and 
they  feel  you,  and  delight  in  you  all  the  time. 

9-24 :  j,  n. 
1,4,  5,  6,  n,  12. 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS 
1824-1892 

"  THE  HOWADJI  IN  SYRIA  " 
VIII 

AMONG  THE  BEDOUEEN 

THE  pleasant  tales  of  Sultans'  pilgrimages  are  only  the 
mirage  of  memory. 

The  poor  and  pious  Muslim,  which  is  not  the  title  of 
Caliphs,  when  he  undertakes  a  long  desert  journey,  does 
not  carry  nine  hundred  camels  for  his  wardrobe,  but  he  5 
carries  his  grave-linen  with  him. 

Stricken  by  fatigue,  or  privation,  or  disease,  when  his 
companions  cannot  tarry  for  his  recovery  or  death,  he  per- 
forms the  ablution  with  sand,  and  digging  a  trench  in  the 
ground,  wraps  himself  in  his  grave-clothes,  and  covering  his  10 
body  with  sand  lies  alone  in  the  desert  to  die,  trusting  that 
the  wind  will  complete  his  burial. 

In  the  Arabs  around  you,  you  will  mark  a  kindred  so- 
briety. Their  eyes  are  luminous  and  lambent,  but  it  is  a 
melancholy  light.  They  do  not  laugh.  They  move  with  15 
easy  dignity,  and  their  habitual  expression  is  musing  and 
introverted,  as  that  of  men  whose  minds  are  stored  with 
the  solemn  imagery  of  the  desert. 

You  will  understand  that  your  own  party  of  Arabs  is  not 
of  the  genuine  desert  breed.    They  are  dwellers  in  cities,  not  20 
dwellers  in  tents.    They  are  mongrel,  like  the  population  of 

7-12:  i.  13-18:  t,  b. 


144  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

a  seaport.  They  pass  from  Palestine  to  Egypt  with  cara- 
vans of  produce,  like  coast-traders,  and  are  not  pure 
Bedoueen. 

But  they  do  not  dishonor  their  ancestry.     When  a  true 

5  Bedoueen  passes  upon  his  solitary  camel,  and  with  a  low- 
spoken  salaam,  looks  abstractedly  and  incuriously  upon  the 
procession  of  great  American  Moguls,  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
his  expression  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  men  around  you, 
but  intensified  by  the  desert. 

10  Burckhardt  says  that  all  Orientals,  and  especially  the 
Arabs,  are  little  sensible  of  the  beauty  of  nature.  But  the 
Bedoueen  is  mild  and  peaceable.  He  seems  to  you  a  dreamy 
savage.  There  is  a  softness  and  languor,  almost  an  ef- 
feminacy of  impression,  the  seal  of  the  sun's  child.  He  does 

15  not  eat  flesh — or  rarely.  He  loves  the  white  camel  with  a 
passion.  He  fights  for  defense,  or  for  necessity;  and  the 
children  of  the  Shereefs,  or  descendants  of  the  Prophet, 
are  sent  into  the  desert  to  be  made  heroes.  They  remain 
there  eight  or  ten  years,  rarely  visiting  their  families. 

20  The  simple  landscape  of  the  desert  is  the  symbol  of  the 
Bedoueen's  character;  and  he  has  little  knowledge  of  more 
than  his  eye  beholds.  In  some  of  the  interior  provinces  of 
China,  there  is  no  name  for  the  ocean,  and  when  in  the 
time  of  Shekh  Daheir,  a  party  of  Bedoueen  came  to  Acre 

25  upon  the  sea,  they  asked  what  was  that  desert  of  water. 

A  Bedoueen  after  a  foray  upon  a  caravan,  discovered 
among  his  booty  several  bags  of  fine  pearls.  He  thought 
them  Dourra,  a  kind  of  grain.  But  as  they  did  not  soften 
in  boiling,  he  was  about  throwing  them  disdainfully  away, 

30  when  a  Gaza  trader  offered  him  a  red  Tarboosh  in  exchange, 
which  he  delightedly  accepted. 

Without  love  of  natural  scenery,  he  listens  forever  to  the 
fascinating  romances  of  the  poets,  for  beautiful  expressions 

4  :  b.  4-9  :  b.  12-19  :  v.  20-25  :  k,  j.  26-31  :  k,  j.  32-145,  4  :  a,  k,  j. 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS  145 

naturally  clothe  the  simple  and  beautiful  images  he  every- 
where beholds.  The  palms,  the  fountains,  the  gazelles,  the 
stars,  and  sun,  and  moon,  the  horse,  and  camel,  these  are 
the  large  illustration  and  suggestion  of  his  poetry. 

Sitting  around  the  evening  fire  and  watching  its  flickering  5 
with  moveless  melancholy,  his  heart  thrills  at  the  prowess 
of  El-Gundubah,  although  he  shall  never  be  a  hero,  and  he 
rejoices  when  Kattalet-esh-Shugan  says  to  Gundubah, 
"  Come  let  us  marry  forthwith,"  although  he  shall  never 
behold  her  beauty,  nor  tread  the  stately  palaces.  10 

He  loves  the  moon  which  shows  him  the  way  over  the 
desert  that  the  sun  would  not  let  him  take  by  day,  and  the 
moon  looking  into  his  eyes,  sees  her  own  melancholy  there. 
In  the  pauses  of  the  story  by  the  fire,  while  the  sympathetic 
spirits  of  the  desert  sigh  in  the  rustling  wind,  he  says  to  his  15 
fellow,  "  Also  in  all  true  poems  there  should  be  palm-trees 
and  running  water." 

For  him  in  the  lonely  desert  the  best  genius  of  Arabia 
has  carefully  recorded  upon  parchment  its  romantic  visions, 
for  him  Haroun  El  Rashid  lived  his  romantic  life,  for  him  20 
the  angel  spoke  to  Mohammed  in  the  cave,  and  God  re- 
ceived the  Prophet  into  the  seventh  heaven. 

Some  early  morning  a  cry  rings  through  the  group  of 
black  square  tents.     He  springs  from  his  dreams  of  green 
gardens  and  flowing  waters,  and  stands  sternly  against  the  25 
hostile  tribe  which  has  surprised  his  own.    The  remorseless 
morning  secretes  in  desert  silence  the  clash  of  swords,  the 
ring  of  musketry,  the  battle-cry.    At  sunset  the  black  square 
tents  are  gone,  the  desolation  of  silence  fills  the  air  that  was 
musical  with  the  recited  loves  of  Zul-Himmeh,  and  the  light  30 
sand   drifts   in   the   evening  wind   over   the   corpse   of   a 
Bedoueen. 

—So  the  grim  Genius  of  the  desert  touches  every  stop  of 

144,  20-145,  IO  •  b>  v-  5"10  :  a»  c>  l>  I4-I7  :  h.  18-22 :  c,  h.  23-32  :  a,  h,  n. 


146  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

romance  and  of  life  in  you  as  you  traverse  his  realm  and 
meditate  his  children.  Yet  warm  and  fascinating  as  is  his 
breath,  it  does  not  warp  your  loyalty  to  your  native  West, 
and  to  the  time  in  which  you  were  born.  Springing  from 
5  your  hard  bed  upon  the  desert,  and  with  wild  morning  en- 
thusiasm pushing  aside  the  door  of  your  tent,  and  stepping 
out  to  stand  among  the  stars,  you  hail  the  desert  and  hate 
the  city,  and  glancing  toward  the  tent  of  the  Armenian 
Khadra,  you  shout  aloud  to  astonished  MacWhirter, 

10     "  I  will  take  some  savage  woman,  she  shall  rear  my  dusky  race." 

But  as  the  day  draws  forward,  and  you  see  the  same 
forms  and  the  same  life  that  Abraham  saw,  and  know  that 
Joseph  leading  Mary  into  Egypt  might  pass  you  to-day, 
nor  be  aware  of  more  than  a  single  sunset  since  he  passed 

15  before,  then  you  feel  that  this  germ,  changeless  at  home, 
is  only  developed  elsewhere,  that  the  boundless  desert  free- 
dom is  only  a  resultless  romance. 

The  sun  sets  and  the  camp  is  pitched.  The  shadows  are 
grateful  to  your  eye,  as  the  dry  air  to  your  lungs. 

20  But  as  you  sit  quietly  in  the  tent  door,  watching  the 
Armenian  camp  and  the  camels,  your  cheek  pales  suddenly 
as  you  remember  Abraham,  and  that  "  he  sat  in  the  tent 
door  in  the  heat  of  the  day."  Saving  yourself,  what  of  the 
scene  is  changed  since  then?  The  desert,  the  camels,  the 

25  tents,  the  turbaned  Arabs,  they  were  what  Abraham  saw 
when  "  he  lifted  up  his  eyes  and  looked,  and  lo !  three  men 
stood  by  him." 

You  are  contemporary  with  the  eldest  history.  Your 
companions  are  the  dusky  figures  of  vaguest  tradition.  The 

30  "  long  result  of  Time  "  is  not  for  you. 

In  that  moment  you  have  lost  your  birthright.  You  are 
Ishmael's  brother.  You  have  your  morning's  wish.  A 

1-4  :  e.  4-9  :  a,  c,  e.  11-15  :  a,  i.  18-25  :  h.  27-29  :  b.  31-147,  5  :  b,  c. 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS  147 

child  of  the  desert,  not  for  you  are  Art,  and  Poetry,  and 
Science,  and  the  glowing  roll  of  History  shrivels  away. 

The  dream  passes  as  the  day  dies,  and  to  the  same  stars 
which  heard  your  morning  shout  of  desert  praise,  you 
whisper  as  you  close  the  tent  door  at  evening,  5 

"  Better  fifty  years  of  Europe,  than  a  cycle  of  Cathay." 


IX 

INTO  THE  DESERT 

IT  was  not  until  the  fourth  day  from  Cairo  that  we 
stretched  fairly  away  from  the  green  land  into  the  open 
desert. 

At  one  point  which,  like  a  cape,  extended  into  the  sand,  10 
we  had  crossed  the  cultivation  of  the  Nile  valley,  and  had 
rested  under  the   palms — and,   O   woe!   in   a  treacherous 
spot  of  that  green  way,  whether  it  was  angry  that  we 
should  again  return  after  so  fair  a  start,  or  whether  it  was 
too  enamored  of  Khadra  to  suffer  her  to  depart,  yet  at  high  15 
noon,   in   crossing  a   little   stream   over   which   the   other 
camels  gallantly  passed,  the  beasts  that  bore  her  palanquin 
tottered  and  stumbled,  then  fell  mired  upon  the  marge  of 
the  stream,  and  the  bulky  palanquin  rolling  like  a  founder- 
ing ship,  gradually  subsided  into  the  mud  and  water,  and  20 
the  fair  Armenian  was  rescued  and  drawn  ashore  by  her 
camel-driver. 

The  Howadji  who  were  sauntering  leisurely  behind,  per- 
ceiving the  catastrophe,  crossed  the  stream  rapidly,  and 
gaining  the  spot  poured  out  profuse  offers  of  aid  and  ex-  25 
pressions  of  sympathy,  while  Khadra  looked  furiously  at 
them  with  her  large,  dreamy  eyes,  and  smiled  at  the  strange 
sound  of  their  voices. 

146,  18-147,  S  :  v,  n.  8-22  :  b,  i.  23-148,  5  :  v  (cf.  144,  10-147,  6)' 


148  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

We  halted  for  a  few  moments  in  the  wretched  little  vil- 
lage, and  stood  out  into  the  desert  again  in  the  early  after- 
noon. Pausing  at  a  little  canal  of  Nile  water  to  refill  bar- 
rels and  bottles,  the  camels  were  allowed  to  drink  their 

5  last  draught,  until  we  should  reach  El  Harish. 

The  desert  was  a  limitless  level  of  smooth,  graveled 
sand,  stretching  on  all  sides  among  the  tufted  shrubs,  like 
spacious,  well-rolled  garden-walks.  It  had  the  air  of  a 
boundless  garden  carefully  kept.  "  And  now,"  said  the 

10  Pacha,  "  begins  the  true  desert." 

Farther  and  farther  fell  the  palms  behind  us,  and  at 
length  the  green  earth  was  but  a  vague  western  belt — a 
darkish  hedge  of  our  garden.  Upon  the  hard  sand  the 
camel-paths  were  faintly  indicated,  like  cattle-paths  upon 

15  a  sandy  field.  They  went  straight  away  to  the  horizon, 
and  vanished  like  a  railway  track. 

The  sun  lay  warm  upon  my  back,  and  with  sudden  sus- 
picion I  turned  to  look  at  him,  as  a  child  upon  an  ogre 
who  is  gently  urging  him  on.  Forward  and  forward  upon 

20  those  faint,  narrow  desert  tracks  should  we  pass  into  the 
very  region  of  his  wrath !  Here  would  he  smite  us  terribly 
with  the  splendor  of  his  scorn,  and  wither  and  consume 
these  audacious  citizens  who  had  come  out  against  him 
with  blue  cotton  umbrellas! 

25  In  that  moment,  excited  as  I  was  by  the  consciousness 
of  being  out  of  sight  of  land  upon  the  desert,  I  laughed 
a  feeble  laugh  at  my  own  feebleness,  and  all  the  tales  of 
exposure  and  peril  in  the  wilderness  that  I  had  ever  read 
returned  with  direful  distinctness,  flooding  my  mind  with 

30  awe. 

As  we  advanced,  the  surface  of  the  desert  was  somewhat 
broken,  and  the  ridges  of  sand  were  enchanted  by  the  sun 
and  shadow  into  the  semblance  of  rose-hued  cliffs,  based 

n-i6:e,  q.  19-24:0,  w. 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS  149 

with  cool,  green  slopes.  It  was  a  simple  effect,  but  of  the 
extremest  beauty ;  and  my  heart,  moved  by  the  sun's  pleas- 
ant pictures,  deemed  him  no  more  an  ogre. 

— "  Do  you  see  the  mirage  ?  "  asked  the  Pacha,  turning 
upon  El  Shiraz,  and  pointing  to  a  seeming  reach  of  water.  5 

"  Yes ;  but  I  admit  no  mirage  which  is  not  perfect  decep- 
tion.    That's  clearly  sand." 

"  True,"  returned  the  Pacha ;  "  but  yet  it  is  a  very  good 
mirage." 

We  jogged  on  until  we  reached  it,  and  found  a  fair  little  10 
lake. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Pacha,  without  turning,  "  that's  clearly 
sand." 

At  every  tuft  of  shrub  the  camels  tried  to  browse,  and 
sometimes  permitting  MacWhirter  to  tarry  and  dally  with  15 
the  dry  green,  I  fell  far  behind  the  caravan,  that  held  its 
steady  way  toward  the  horizon. 

Then  returned  the  sense  of  solitude,  and  all  the  more 
deeply  because  the  sky  was  of  that  dark,  dense  blue — from 
the   contrast   with   the   shining   sand — which    I    had   only  20 
seen  among  the  highest  peaks  of  Switzerland,  contrasted 
with  the  snow,  as  on  the  glacier  of  the  Aar  beneath  the 
Finster    Aarhorn.     In    that    Arabian    day,    remembering 
Switzerland,  I  lifted  my  eyes,  and  seconded  by  the  sun, 
I  saw  the  drifts  of  pure  sand,  like  drifts  of  Alpine  snow.  25 
The  lines  and  sweeps  were  as  sharp  and  delicate,  and  the 
dark  shadows  whose  play  is  glorious  upon  this  wide  race- 
course of  the  winds,  made  the  farther  ridges  like  green 
hills.     Then,  because  the  shrubs  pushed  up  so  frequently, 
the  desert  was  but  a  cultivated  country,  overdrifted  with  30 
sand. 

At  sunset  we  reached  a  solitary  palm  grove,  an  oasis  in 
the  waste,  and  the  camp  was  pitched  beneath  the  trees. 

18-31  :a,  s,  k.  32-150,5:  n. 


150  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

The  Germans  were  not  far  away,  but  they,  like  the  Cairene 
merchant,  concluded  that  we  were  Ingleez  Howadji,  but, 
unlike  him,  did  not  expose  themselves  to  our  civilities. 
Strangers  are  now  as  little  likely  to  make  social  overtures 

5  to  John  Bull  as  he  is  to  receive  them. 

The  palms  were  shrubby  and  scant.  But  the  stars  were 
bright  among  their  boughs  as  we  looked  from  the  tent  door 
— and  as  the  Pacha  wrapped  himself  in  his  capote  and  lay 
down  to  sleep,  I  asked  him  what  the  Prophet  said  of  palms. 

10  In  reply  the  Pacha  said  disagreeable  things  of  the 
Prophet.  But  the  learned  say,  that  his  favorite  fruits  were 
fresh  dates  and  watermelons.  Honor,  said  he,  your  pa- 
ternal aunt  the  Date  Palm,  for  she  was  created  of  the 
earth  of  which  Adam  was  formed.  Whoso  eateth,  said  the 

15  Prophet,  a  mouthful  of  watermelon,  God  writeth  for  him 

a   thousand   good   works   and   cancelleth   a   thousand   evil 

works,  and  raiseth  him  a  thousand  degrees,  for  it  came 

from  Paradise. 

— "  Golden   Sleeve,"   said   the   Pacha,   with   slumberous 

20  vagueness — "  watermelons  for  breakfast." 


MIRAGE 

HENRY  MAUNDRELL  having  been  shut  out  all  night  from 
a  Shekh's  house  in  Syria,  during  a  pelting  rain,  revenged 
himself  the  next  morning  by  recording  that  the  three  great 
virtues  of  the  Mohammedan  religion  are  a  long  beard, 
25  prayers  of  the  same  standard,  and  a  kind  of  Pharisaical 
superciliousness. 

Our  uninvited  guest,  the  Shekh's  father,  possessed  those 
virtues  in  perfection.  Enjoying  our  escort,  eating  our  food, 
warming  himself  at  our  fire,  the  testy  old  gentleman  evi- 
6-20:  w.  27-151,  8:  w. 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS  151 

dently  thought  that  our  infidel  presences  cumbered  the  earth, 
and  soiled  by  contact  his  own  Muslim  orthodoxy.  He  was 
therefore  perpetually  flinging  himself  upon  his  little  donkey 
and  shambling  toward  the  horizon,  with  a  sniff  of  disgust, 
to  air  his  virtue  from  further  contagion  in  the  pure  desert  5 
atmosphere.  We  were  as  continually  overhauling  him 
turned  up  against  a  wind-sheltered  sand  bank  and,  in 
meditative  solitude,  smoking  our  choice  Latakia. 

It  was  our  daily  amusement  to  watch  the  old  Ishmael, 
whose  mind  and  life  were  like  the  desert  around  us,  put-  10 
ting    contemptuously    away    from    us    upon    his    tottering 
donkey,   his   withered   ankles  and  clumsy   shoes   dangling 
along  over  the  sand— away  from  us,  stately  travelers  upon 
MacWhirter  and  El  Shiraz,  for  whom  Shakespeare  sang, 
and  Plato  thought,  and  Raphael  painted,  and  to  whom  the  15 
old  Ishmael's  country,  its  faith  and  its  history,  were  but 
incidents  in  the  luxury  of  Life. 

Yet  Ishmael  maintained  the  balance  well,  and  never  re- 
laxed his  sniffing  contempt  for  the  Howadji,  who,  in  turn, 
mused  upon  the  old  man,  and  figured  the  strange  aspect  of  20 
his  mind. 

Like  a  bold  bare  landscape  it  must  have  been,  or  rather 
like  the  skeleton  of  a  landscape.  For  Ishmael  was  not  true 
Bedoueen  enough  to  have  clothed  the  naked  lines  and  cliffs 
of  his  mind  with  the  verdure  of  romantic  reverie.  At  25 
evening  he  did  not  listen  to  the  droning  talk  of  the  other 
Arabs  over  the  fire,  but  curled  himself  up  in  his  blankets, 
and  went  to  sleep.  By  day  he  sought  solitude  and  dozed  in 
his  own  smoke,  and  whenever  he  spoke  it  was  in  the  queru- 
lous tone  of  soured  old  age.  30 

His  whole  life  had  been  a  monotonous  tale  endlessly  re- 
peated. From  Cairo  to  Gaza, — from  Gaza  to  Cairo.  As 
a  boy,  tugging  the  caravan  along,  with  the  halter  drawn 

9-17:  w,h  (cf.  97,  21-98,  17)-  20  :1.  22-30  :e.  31-152,3:0. 


152  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

over  his  shoulder.  As  a  man,  in  supreme  command,  super- 
intending the  whole.  As  a  grandsire,  cantering  away  from 
infidel  dogs  to  smoke  their  tobacco  tranquilly  in  the  sun. 
Life  must  have  been  a  mystery  to  Ishmael  could  he  have 

5  ever  meditated  it,  and  the  existence  of  a  western  world, 
Christians,  and  civilization,  only  explained  by  some  vague 
theory  of  gratuitous  tobacco  for  the  Faithful. 

As  I  watched  his  bright  young  grandson  Hamed,  leading 
the  train,  I  could  not  but  ruefully  reflect  that  the  child  is 

10  father  of  the  man,  and  foresee  that  he  would  only  ripen 
into  an  Ishmael,  and  smoke  the  ungrown  Latakia  of  Ho- 
wadji  yet  unborn. 

But  through  all  speculations  and  dreams  and  jokes  and 
intermittent  conversation — for  you  are  naturally  silent 

15  upon  the  desert — your  way  is  still  onward  over  the  sand, 
and  Jerusalem  and  Damascus  approach  slowly,  slowly,  two 
and  a  half  miles  an  hour. 

In  the  midst  of  your  going,  a  sense  of  intense  weariness 
and  tedium  seizes  your  soul.  Rock,  rock — jerk,  jerk — upon 

20  the  camel.  You  are  sick  of  the  thin  withered  slip  of  a  tail 
in  front,  and  the  gaunt,  stiff  movement  of  the  shapeless, 
tawny  legs  before  you,  and  you  vainly  turn  in  your  seat 
for  relief  from  the  eyes  of  Khadra: — vainly,  for  the  cur- 
tains of  the  palanquin  are  drawn;  the  warm  morning  sun- 

25  light  has  been  Mandragora  to  her,  and  she  is  sleeping. 

The  horizon  is  no  longer  limitless,  and  of  an  ocean 
grandeur.  The  sluggish  path  trails  through  a  defile  of 
glaring  sand,  whose  sides  just  contemptuously  obstruct  your 
view,  and  exasperate  you  because  they  are  low,  and  of  no 

30  fine  outline.  Switzerland  has  vanished  to-day,  and  the 
Arabia  that  chokes  your  eye  is  Arabia  Felix  no  longer. 
Your  brow  flushes  and  your  tongue  is  parched,  and  leering 
over  the  rim  of  the  monotonous  defile,  Fever  points  at  you, 

4-7  :  w.   13-17  :  q.   18-25  :  h.  26-153,  7  :  f,  n. 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS  153 

mockingly,  its  long,  lank  finger,  and  scornfully,  as  to  a 
victim  not  worth  the  wooing.  Suffocated  in  the  thick,  hot 
air,  the  sun  smites  you,  and  its  keen  arrows  dart  upward, 
keener,  from  the  ground.  The  drear  silence,  like  a  voice 
in  Nightmare,  whispers — "  You  dared  to  tempt  me ;  "  and  5 
with  fresh  fury  of  shining,  and  a  more  stifling  heat,  the 
horrors  of  the  mid-desert  encompass  you. 

But  in  the  midst  of  your  weariness  and  despair,  more 
alluring  than  the  mirage  of  cool  lakes  and  green  valleys  to 
the  eye  of  the  dying  Bedoueen,  a  voice  of  running  water  10 
sings  through  your  memory, — the  sound  of  streams  gurgling 
under  the  village  bridge  at  evening,  and  the  laughter  of 
boys  bathing  there, — yourself  a  boy,  yourself  plunging  in 
the  deep,  dark  coolness, — and  so,  weary  and  fevered  in  the 
desert  of  Arabia,  you  are  overflowed  by  the  memory  of  15 
your  youth,  and  to  you,  as  to  Khadra,  the  sun  has  been 
Mandragora  and  you  are  sleeping. 

You  cannot  tell  how  long  you  sleep  and  doze.  You  fancy, 
when  your  eyes  at  length  open,  that  you  are  more  deeply 
dreaming.  20 

For  the  pomp  of  a  wintry  landscape  dazzles  your  awak- 
ing. The  sweeps  and  drifts  of  the  sand  hills  among  which 
you  are  winding,  have  the  sculpturesque  grace  of  snow. 
They  descend  in  strange  corrugations  to  a  long  level  lake — 
a  reach  of  water  frozen  into  transparent  blue  ice,  streaked  25 
with  the  white  sifted  snow  that  has  overblown  it.  The 
seeming  lake  is  circled  with  low,  melancholy  hills.  They 
are  bare,  like  the  rock-setting  of  solitary  mountain  tarns. 
The  death  of  wintry  silence  broods  over  the  whole,  but  the 
sky  is  cloudless,  and  the  sun  sits  supreme  over  the  miracu-  30 
lous  landscape.  Vainly  you  rally  your  thoughts,  and  smile 
at  the  perfect  mirage.  Its  lines  do  not  melt  in  your  smiles, 
and  the  spectacle  becomes  more  solemn  in  the  degree  that  you 

8-17  :b,  i,  h.  18-20  :  b.  21-22-23,  26-28,  29-31-32  :  b.  21-154,3:5,11. 


154  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

are  conscious  of  the  delusion.  Never,  upon  its  eternal  Alpine 
throne,  never,  through  the  brief,  brilliant  days  of  New 
England  December,  was  winter  more  evident  and  entire. 

And  when  you  hear  behind  you,  sole  sound  in  the  desert, 
5  the  shrill  tenor  of  the  Armenian's  camel-driver,  chanting 
in  monotonous  refrain  songs  whose  meaning  you  can  only 
imagine,  because  Khadra  draws  aside  the  curtains  to  listen, 
and  because  you  have  seen  that  the  tall,  swarthy  Syrian 
is  enamored  of  Khadra, — then  it  is  not  Arabia,  nor  Switzer- 

10  land,  nor  New  England,  but  a  wintry  glade  of  Lapland, 
and  a  solitary  singing  to  his  reindeer. 

This  is  not  a  dream,  nor  has  leering  Fever  touched  you 
with  his  finger,  but  it  is  a  mystery  of  the  desert.  You  have 
eaten  an  apple  of  the  Hesperides.  For  the  Bedoueen  poets 

15  have  not  alone  the  shifting  cloud-scenery  to  garnish  their 
romances,  but  thus,  unconsciously  to  them,  the  forms  of 
another  landscape  and  of  another  life  than  theirs,  are  mar- 
shaled before  their  eyes,  and  their  minds  are  touched  with 
the  beauty  of  an  unknown  experience. 

20  In  this  variety  of  aspect,  in  endless  calm,  the  desert  sur- 
passes the  sea.  It  is  seldom  an  unbroken  l&vel,  and  from 
the  quantity  of  its  atmosphere,  slight  objects  are  magnified, 
and  a  range  of  mounds  will  often  mask  as  a  group  of  goodly 
hills.  Even  in  the  most  interrupted  reaches,  the  horizon  is 

25  rarely  a  firm  line,  but  the  mirage  breaks  it,  so  that  the  edge 
of  the  landscape  is  always  quivering  and  uncertain. 

Pleasant,  after  the  wild  romance  of  such  a  desert  day — 
romance,  which  the  sun  in  setting,  closes — to  reach  the 
camping-ground,  to  gurgle  in  MacWhirter's  ear  with  the 

30  guttural   harshness  that  he  understands   as  the  welcome 
signal  of  rest,  and  to  feel  him,  not  without  a  growl  of  ill- 
humor,  quaking  and  rolling  beneath  you,  and  finally,  with 
a  half  sudden  start,  sinking  to  the  ground. 
12-19  :  e.  27-33  :  i. 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS  155 

You  tie  his  bent  fore-knee  together,  with  the  halter  which 
goes  around  his  head;  and  you  turn  to  see  that  the  tent  is 
not  spread  over  stones,  which  would  not  stuff  your  pillow 
softly.  Then,  returning,  you  observe  that  MacWhirter 
with  his  foreleg  still  bent  and  bound  to  his  head,  is  limping  5 
upon  the  three  serviceable  legs  to  browse  upon  chance 
shrubs,  and  to  assert  his  total  independence  of  you,  and 
contempt  of  your  precautions. 

Meanwhile,  Khadra  steps  out  of  her  palanquin,  and  while 
her  father's  camp  is  pitched,  she  shakes  out  the  silken  full-  10 
ness  of  her  shintyan,  and  strolls  off  upon  the  desert.  The 
old  Armenian  slips  the  pad  from  the  back  of  his  white 
mare,  for  he  does  not  ride  in  a  saddle,  and  stands  in  every- 
body's way,  in  his  long,  blue  broadcloth  kaftan,  taking 
huge  pinches  of  snuff.  15 

The  Commander,  relieved  of  his  arsenal,  bustles  among 
our  Arabs,  swearing  at  them  lustily  whenever  he  approaches 
the  Howadji,  apparently  convinced  that  everything  is  going 
well,  so  long  as  he  makes  noise  enough. 

"  Therein  not  peculiar,"  murmurs  the  Pacha,  rolled  up  20 
in  his  huge  woolen  capote,  and  smoking  a  contemplative 
chibouque. 

The  tents  are  pitched,  the  smoke  curls  to  the  sky,  and 
the  howling  wilderness  is  tamed  by  the  domestic  prepara- 
tions of  getting  tea.  25 

The  sun  also  is  tamed,  our  great  romancer,  our  fervent 
poet,  our  glorious  Painter,  who  has  made  the  day  a  poem 
and  a  picture,  who  has  peopled  memory  with  sweet  and  sad 
imagery,  who,  like  Jesus,  brought  a  sword,  yet  like  him  has 
given  us  rest.  He,  too,  is  tamed,  and  his  fervor  is  failing.  30 
Yet  as  he  retires  through  the  splendor  of  the  vapory  archi- 
tecture in  the  West,  he  looks  at  us  once  more  like  a  king 
from  his  palace  windows. 

9-15  :  h.  16-25  :w.  26-33:0,6. 
6,  7,  8,  9,  u,  12,  13,  14. 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 
18501894 

THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

"Whether  it  be  wise  in  men  to  do  such  actions  or  not,  I  am 
sure  it  is  so  in  States  to  honor  them."— SIR  WILLIAM  TEMPLE. 

THERE  is  one  story  of  the  wars  of  Rome  which  I  have 
always  very  much  envied  for  England.  Germanicus  was 
going  down  at  the  head  of  the  legions  into  a  dangerous 
river — on  the  opposite  bank  the  woods  were  full  of  Ger- 
5  mans — when  there  flew  out  seven  great  eagles  which 
seemed  to  marshal  the  Romans  on  their  way;  they  did  not 
pause  or  waver,  but  disappeared  into  the  forest  where  the 
enemy  lay  concealed.  "  Forward !  "  cried  Germanicus  with 
a  fine  rhetorical  inspiration,  "  Forward !  and  follow  the 

10  Roman  birds."  It  would  be  a  very  heavy  spirit  that  did  not 
give  a  leap  at  such  a  signal,  and  a  very  timorous  one  that 
continued  to  have  any  doubt  of  success.  To  appropriate 
the  eagles  as  fellow  countrymen  was  to  make  imaginary 
allies  of  the  forces  of  nature;  the  Roman  Empire  and  its 

15  military  fortunes,  and  along  with  these  the  prospects  of 
those  individual  Roman  legionaries  now  fording  a  river  in 
Germany,  looked  altogether  greater  and  more  hopeful.  It 
is  a  kind  of  illusion  easy  to  produce.  A  particular  shape  of 
cloud,  the  appearance  of  a  particular  star,  the  holiday  of 

20  some  particular  saint,  anything  in  short  to  remind  the  com- 
batants of  patriotic  legends  or  old  successes,  may  be 

10-157,  3  :  c,  q,  n. 
156 


ROBERT   Louis    STEVENSON  157 

enough  to  change  the  issue  of  a  pitched  battle;  for  it  gives 
to  the  one  party  a  feeling  that  Right  and  the  larger  interests 
are  with  him. 

If  an  Englishman  wishes  to  have  such  a  feeling,  it  must 
be  about  the  sea.     The  lion  is  nothing  to  us;  he  has  not  5 
been  taken  to  the  hearts  of  the  people,  and  naturalized  as 
an  English  emblem.    We  know  right  well  that  a  lion  would 
fall  foul  of  us  as  grimly  as  he  would  of  a  Frenchman  or  a 
Moldavian  Jew,  and  we  do  not  carry  him  before  us  in  the 
smoke  of  battle.    But  the  sea  is  our  approach  and  bulwark ;  10 
it  has  been  the  scene  of  our  greatest  triumphs  and  dan- 
gers; and  we  are  accustomed  in  lyrical  strains  to  claim  it 
as  our  own.    The  prostrating  experiences  of  foreigners  be- 
tween Calais  and  Dover  have  always  an  agreeable  side  to 
English  prepossessions.     A  man  from  Bedfordshire,  who  15 
does  not  know  one  end  of  the  ship  from  the  other  until 
she  begins  to  move,  swaggers  among  such  persons  with  a 
sense  of  hereditary  nautical  experience.    To  suppose  your- 
self endowed  with  natural  parts  for  the  sea  because  you 
are  the  countryman  of  Blake  and  mighty  Nelson,  is  per-  20 
haps  just  as  unwarrantable  as  to  imagine  Scotch  extraction 
a  sufficient  guarantee  that  you  will  look  well  in  a  kilt.    But 
the  feeling  is  there,  and  seated  beyond  the  reach  of  argu- 
ment.    We   should    consider   ourselves    unworthy   of    our 
descent   if  we  did  not   share  the  arrogance   of  our  pro-  25 
genitors,  and  please  ourselves  with  the  pretension  that  the 
sea  is  English.     Even  where  it  is  looked  upon  by  the  guns 
and  battlements  of  another  nation  we  regard  it  as  a  kind  of 
English  cemetery,  where  the  bones  of  our  seafaring  fathers 
take  their  rest  until  the  last  trumpet ;  for  I  suppose  no  other  30 
nation  has  lost  as  many  ships,  or  sent  as  many  brave  fellows 
to  the  bottom. 

There  is  nowhere  such  a  background  for  heroism  as  the 

4-22  :  a,  j.  22-32  :  n.  33-158,10:111, 


158  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

noble,  terrifying,  and  picturesque  conditions  of  some  of  our 
sea  fights.  Hawke's  battle  in  the  tempest,  and  Aboukir  at 
the  moment  when  the  French  Admiral  blew  up,  reach  the 
limit  of  what  is  imposing  to  the  imagination.  And  our 

5  naval  annals  owe  some  of  their  interest  to  the  fantastic  and 
beautiful  appearance  of  old  warships  and  the  romance  that 
invests  the  sea  and  everything  seagoing  in  the  eyes  of  Eng- 
lish lads  on  a  half-holiday  at  the  coast.  Nay,  and  what  we 
know  of  the  misery  between  decks  enhances  the  bravery  of 

10  what  was  done  by  giving  it  something  for  contrast.  We 
like  to  know  that  these  bold  and  honest  fellows  contrived 
to  live,  and  to  keep  bold  and  honest,  among  absurd  and 
vile  surroundings.  No  reader  can  forget  the  description  of 
the  Thunder  in  "  Roderick  Random " :  the  disorderly 

15  tyranny ;  the  cruelty  and  dirt  of  officers  and  men ;  deck  after 
deck,  each  with  some  new  object  of  offense;  the  hospital, 
where  the  hammocks  were  huddled  together  with  but  four- 
teen inches  space  for  each;  the  cockpit,  far  under  water, 
where,  "  in  an  intolerable  stench/'  the  spectacled  steward 

20 kept  the  accounts  of  the  different  messes;  and  the  canvas 
inclosure,  six  feet  square,  in  which  Morgan  made  flip  and 
salmagundi,  smoked  his  pipe,  sang  his  Welsh  songs,  and 
swore  his  queer  Welsh  imprecations.  There  are  portions 
of  this  business  on  board  the  Thunder  over  which  the 

25  reader  passes  lightly  and  hurriedly,  like  a  traveler  in  a  ma- 
larious country.  It  is  easy  enough  to  understand  the  opinion 
of  Dr.  Johnson :  "  Why,  sir,"  he  said,  "  no  man  will  be  a 
sailor  who  has  contrivance  enough  to  get  himself  into  a  jail." 
You  would  fancy  anyone's  spirit  would  die  out  under  such 

30  an  accumulation  of  darkness,  noisomeness,  and  injustice, 
above  all  when  he  had  not  come  there  of  his  own  free 
will,  but  under  the  cutlasses  and  bludgeons  of  the  press- 
gang.  But  perhaps  a  watch  on  deck  in  the  sharp  sea  air 

10-28  :  c,  a,  o  (cf.  102,  1-15)-  28-159,  IO  •  c< 


ROBERT   Louis    STEVENSON  159 

put  a  man  on  his  mettle  again;  a  battle  must  have  been 
a  capital  relief;  and  prize-money,  bloodily  earned  and 
grossly  squandered,  opened  the  doors  of  the  prison  for  a 
twinkling.  Somehow  or  other,  at  least,  this  worst  of  possi- 
ble lives  could  not  overlie  the  spirit  and  gayety  of  our  5 
sailors ;  they  did  their  duty  as  though  they  had  some  interest 
in  the  fortune  of  that  country  which  so  cruelly  oppressed 
them,  they  served  their  guns  merrily  when  it  came  to  fight- 
ing, and  they  had  the  readiest  ear  for  a  bold,  honorable 
sentiment,  of  any  class  of  men  the  world  ever  produced.  10 

Most  men  of  high  destinies  have  high-sounding  names. 
Pym  and  Habakkuk  may  do  pretty  well,  but  they  must  not 
think  to  cope  with  the  Cromwells  and  Isaiahs.  And  you 
could  not  find  a  better  case  in  point  than  that  of  the  English 
Admirals.  Drake  and  Rooke  and  Hawke  are  picked  names  15 
for  men  of  execution.  Frobisher,  Rodney,  Boscawen,  Foul- 
Weather,  Jack  Byron,  are  all  good  to  catch  the  eye  in  a  page 
of  a  naval  history.  Cloudesley  Shovel  is  a  mouthful  of 
quaint  and  sounding  syllables.  Benbow  has  a  bull-dog 
quality  that  suits  the  man's  character,  and  it  takes  us  back  20 
to  those  English  archers  who  were  his  true  comrades  for 
plainness,  tenacity,  and  pluck.  Raleigh  is  spirited  and  mar- 
tial, and  signifies  an  act  of  bold  conduct  in  the  field.  It  is 
impossible  to  judge  of  Blake  or  Nelson,  no  names  current 
among  men  being  worthy  of  such  heroes.  But  still  it  is  25 
odd  enough,  and  very  appropriate  in  this  connection,  that 
the  latter  was  greatly  taken  with  his  Sicilian  title.  "  The 
signification,  perhaps,  pleased  him/'  says  Southey ;  "  Duke 
of  Thunder  was  what  in  Dahomey  would  have  been  called 
a  strong  name;  it  was  to  a  sailor's  taste,  and  certainly  to  no  30 
man  could  it  be  more  applicable."  Admiral  in  itself  is  one 
of  the  most  satisfactory  of  distinctions;  it  has  a  noble 
sound  and  a  very  proud  history;  and  Columbus  thought  so 

11-160,  2:  h. 


160  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

highly  of  it,  that  he  enjoined  his  heirs  to  sign  themselves 
by  that  title  as  long  as  the  house  should  last. 

But  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  men,  and  not  their  names,  that 
I  wish  to  speak  about  in  this  paper.  That  spirit  is  truly 
5  English;  they,  and  not  Tennyson's  cotton-spinners  or  Mr. 
D'Arcy  Thompson's  Abstract  Bagman,  are  the  true  and 
typical  Englishmen.  There  may  be  more  head  of  bagmen 
in  the  country,  but  human  beings  are  reckoned  by  number 
only  in  political  constitutions.  And  the  Admirals  are 

10  typical  in  the  full  force  of  the  word.  They  are  splendid 
examples  of  virtue,  indeed,  but  of  a  virtue  in  which  most 
Englishmen  can  claim  a  moderate  share;  and  what  we  ad- 
mire in  their  lives  is  a  sort  of  apotheosis  of  ourselves.  Al- 
most everybody  in  our  land,  except  humanitarians  and  a 

15  few  persons  whose  youth  has  been  depressed  by  exception- 
ally aesthetic  surroundings,  can  understand  and  sympathize 
with  an  Admiral  or  a  prize-fighter.  I  do  not  wish  to 
bracket  Benbow  and  Tom  Cribb;  but,  depend  upon  it,  they 
are  practically  bracketed  for  admiration  in  the  minds  of 

20  many  frequenters  of  ale-houses.  If  you  told  them  about 
Germanicus  and  the  eagles,  or  Regulus  going  back  to  Car- 
thage, they  would  very  likely  fall  asleep ;  but  tell  them  about 
Harry  Pearce  and  Jem  Belcher,  or  about  Nelson  and  the 
Nile,  and  they  put  down  their  pipes  to  listen.  I  have  by 

25  me  a  copy  of  "  Boxiana,"  on  the  fly-leaves  of  which  a 
youthful  member  of  the  fancy  kept  a  chronicle  of  remarka- 
ble events  and  an  obituary  of  great  men.  Here  we  find 
piously  chronicled  the  demise  of  jockeys,  watermen,  and 
pugilists — Johnny  Moore,  of  the  Liverpool  Prize  Ring; 

30 Tom  Spring,  aged  fifty-six;  "  Pierce  Egan,  senior,  writer  of 
'  Boxiana '  and  other  sporting  works " — and  among  all 
these,  the  Duke  of  Wellington!  If  Benbow  had  lived  in 
the  time  of  this  annalist,  do  you  suppose  his  name  would 

3-17 :  o,  j.  17-161,  i :  c,  h  (cf.  112,  2-17). 


ROBERT   Louis    STEVENSON  161 

not  have  been  added  to  the  glorious  roll?  In  short,  we  do 
not  all  feel  warmly  towards  Wesley  or  Laud,  we  cannot  all 
take  pleasure  in  "  Paradise  Lost " ;  but  there  are  certain 
common  sentiments  and  touches  of  nature  by  which  the 
whole  nation  is  made  to  feel  kinship.  A  little  while  ago  5 
everybody,  from  Hazlitt  and  John  Wilson  down  to  the  im- 
becile creature  who  scribbled  his  register  on  the  fly-leaves 
of  "  Boxiana,"  felt  a  more  or  less  shamefaced  satisfaction 
in  the  exploits  of  prize-fighters.  And  the  exploits  of  the 
Admirals  are  popular  to  the  same  degree,  and  tell  in  all  10 
ranks  of  society.  Their  sayings  and  doings  stir  English 
blood  like  the  sound  of  a  trumpet;  and  if  the  Indian  Em- 
pire, the  trade  of  London,  and  all  the  outward  and  visible 
ensigns  of  our  greatness  should  pass  away,  we  should  still 
leave  behind  us  a  durable  monument  of  what  we  were  in  15 
these  sayings  and  doings  of  the  English  Admirals. 

Duncan,  lying  off  the  Texel  with  his  own  flagship,  the 
Venerable,  and  only  one  other  vessel,  heard  that  the  whole 
Dutch  fleet  was  putting  to  sea.  He  told  Captain  Hotham 
to  anchor  alongside  of  him  in  the  narrowest  part  of  the  20 
channel,  and  fight  his  vessel  till  she  sank.  "  I  have  taken 
the  depth  of  the  water,"  added  he,  "  and  when  the  Venera- 
ble goes  down,  my  flag  will  still  fly."  And  you  observe 
this  is  no  naked  Viking  in  a  prehistoric  period ;  but  a  Scotch 
member  of  Parliament,  with  a  smattering  of  the  classics,  25 
a  telescope,  a  cocked  hat  of  great  size,  and  flannel  under- 
clothing. In  the  same  spirit,  Nelson  went  into  Aboukir 
with  six  colors  flying;  so  that  even  if  five  were  shot 
away,  it  should  not  be  imagined  he  had  struck.  He  too 
must  needs  wear  his  four  stars  outside  his  Admiral's  frock,  30 
to  be  a  butt  for  sharpshooters.  "  In  honor  I  gained  them," 
he  said  to  objectors,  adding  with  sublime  illogicality,  "  in 
honor  I  will  die  with  them."  Captain  Douglas  of  the 

S-i6:c,  n.  17-27  :  f .  17-162,8:)'. 


1 62  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

Royal  Oak,  when  the  Dutch  fired  his  vessel  in  the  Thames, 
sent  his  men  ashore,  but  was  burned  along  with  her  himself 
rather  than  desert  his  post  without  orders.  Just  then,  per- 
haps the  Merry  Monarch  »was*  chasing  a  moth  round  the 
5  supper-table  with  the  ladies  of  his  court.  When  Raleigh 
sailed  into  Cadiz,  and  all  the  forts  and  ships  opened  fire 
on  him  at  once,  he  scorned  to  shoot  a  gun,  and  made  answer 
with  a  flourish  of  insulting  trumpets.  I  like  this  bravado 
better  than  the  wisest  dispositions  to  insure  victory;  it 

10  comes  from  the  heart  and  goes  to  it.  God  has  made  nobler 
heroes,  but  He  never  made  a  finer  gentleman  than  Walter 
Raleigh.  And  as  our  Admirals  were  full  of  heroic  supersti- 
tions, and  had  a  strutting  and  vainglorious  style  of  fight,  so 
they  discovered  a  startling  eagerness  for  battle,  and  courted 

15  war  like  a  mistress.  When  the  news  came  to  Essex  before 
Cadiz  that  the  attack  had  been  decided,  he  threw  his  hat 
into  the  sea.  It  is  in  this  way  that  a  schoolboy  hears  of  a 
half-holiday;  but  this  was  a  bearded  man  of  great  posses- 
sions who  had  just  been  allowed  to  risk  his  life.  Benbow 

20  could  not  lie  still  in  his  bunk  after  he  had  lost  his  leg ; 
he  must  be  on  deck  in  a  basket  to  direct  and  animate  the 
fight.  I  said  they  loved  war  like  a  mistress;  yet  I  think 
there  are  not  many  mistresses  we  should  continue  to  woo 
under  similar  circumstances.  Trowbridge  went  ashore  with 

25  the  Culloden,  and  was  able  to  take  no  part  in  the  battle  of 
the  Nile.  "  The  merits  of  that  ship  and  her  gallant  cap- 
tain," wrote  Nelson  to  the  Admiralty,  "  are  too  well  known 
to  benefit  by  anything  I  could  say.  Her  misfortune  was 
great  in  getting  aground,  while  her  more  -fortunate  com- 

30  panions  were  in  the  full  tide  of  happiness."  This  is  a  nota- 
ble expression,  and  depicts  the  whole  great-hearted,  big- 
spoken  stock  of  the  English  Admirals  to  a  hair.  It  was  to 
be  "  in  the  full  tide  of  happiness  "  for  Nelson  to  destroy 

8-24 :  j,  a. 


ROBERT   Louis    STEVENSON  163 

five  thousand  five  hundred  and  twenty-five  of  his  fellow 
creatures,  and  have  his  own  scalp  torn  open  by  a  piece  of 
langridge  shot.  Hear  him  again  at  Copenhagen :  "  A  shot 
through  the  mainmast  knocked  the  splinters  about;  and  he 
observed  to  one  of  his  officers  with  a  smile,  '  It  is  warm  5 
work,  and  this  may  be  the  last  to  any  of  us  at  any  moment ' ; 
and  then,  stopping  short  at  the  gangway,  added,  with  emo- 
tion, '  But,  mark  you — /  would  not  be  elsewhere  for  thou- 
sands."' 

I  must  tell  one  more  story,  which  has  lately  been  made  10 
familiar  to  us  all,  and  that  in  one  of  the  noblest  ballads  in 
the  English  language.     I  had  written  my  tame  prose  ab- 
stract, I  shall  beg  the  reader  to  believe,  when  I  had  no 
notion  that  the  sacred  bard  designed  an  immortality  for 
Grenville.     Sir    Richard    Grenville    was    Vice- Admiral    to  15 
Lord  Thomas  Howard,  and  lay  off  the  Azores  with  the 
English  squadron  in  1591.     He  was  a  noted  tyrant  to  his 
crew :  a  dark,  bullying  fellow  apparently ;  and  it  is  related  of 
him  that  he  would  chew  and  swallow  wine-glasses,  by  way 
of  convivial  levity,  till  the  blood  ran  out  of  his  mouth.  20 
When  the  Spanish  fleet  of  fifty  sail  came  within  sight  of  the 
English,    his   ship,   the   Revenge,   was   the   last   to   weigh 
anchor,  and  was  so   far  circumvented  by  the  Spaniards, 
that  there  were  but  two  courses  open — either  to  turn  her 
back  upon  the  enemy  or  sail  through  one  of  his  squadrons.  25 
The  first  alternative  Grenville  dismissed  as   dishonorable 
to  himself,  his  country,  and  her  Majesty's  ship.     Accord- 
ingly, he  chose  the  latter,  and  steered  into  the   Spanish 
armament.    Several  vessels  he  forced  to  luff  and  fall  under 
his  lee;  until,  about  three  o'clock  of  the  afternoon,  a  great  30 
ship  of  three  decks  of  ordnance  took  the  wind  out  of  his 
sails,  and  immediately  boarded.     Thenceforward,  and  all 
night  long,  the  Revenge  held  her  own  single-handed  against 

10-20  :  q.   10-164,  29  *  J>  f>  n< 


164  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

the  Spaniards.  As  one  ship  was  beaten  off,  another  took 
its  place.  She  endured,  according  to  Raleigh's  computa- 
tion, "  eight  hundred  shot  of  great  artillery,  besides  many 
assaults  and  entries."  By  morning  the  powder  was  spent, 
5  the  pikes  all  broken,  not  a  stick  was  standing,  "  nothing 
left  overhead  either  for  flight  or  defense " ;  six  feet  of 
water  in  the  hold;  almost  all  the  men  hurt;  and  Grenville 
himself  in  a  dying  condition.  To  bring  them  to  this  pass, 
a  fleet  of  fifty  sail  had  been  mauling  them  for  fifteen  hours, 

10  the  Admiral  of  the  Hulks  and  the  Ascension  of  Seville  had 
both  gone  down  alongside,  and  two  other  vessels  had  taken 
refuge  on  shore  in  a  sinking  state.  In  Hawke's  words,  they 
had  "  taken  a  great  deal  of  drubbing."  The  captain  and 
crew  thought  they  had  done  about  enough;  but  Grenville 

15  was  not  of  this  opinion ;  he  gave  orders  to  the  master  gunner, 
whom  he  knew  to  be  a  fellow  after  his  own  stamp,  to 
scuttle  the  Revenge  where  she  lay.  The  others,  who  were 
not  mortally  wounded  like  the  Admiral,  interfered  with 
some  decision,  locked  the  master  gunner  in  his  cabin,  after 

20  having  deprived  him  of  his  sword,  for  he  manifested  an 
intention  to  kill  himself  if  he  were  not  to  sink  the  ship ;  and 
sent  to  the  Spaniards  to  demand  terms.  These  were 
granted.  The  second  or  third  day  after,  Grenville  died  of 
his  wounds  aboard  the  Spanish  flagship,  leaving  his  con- 

25  tempt  upon  the  "  traitors  and  dogs  "  who  had  not  chosen  to 
do  as  he  did,  and  engage  fifty  vessels,  well  found  and  fully 
manned,  with  six  inferior  craft  ravaged  by  sickness  and 
short  of  stores.  He  at  least,  he  said,  had  done  his  duty  as 
he  was  bound  to  do,  and  looked  for  everlasting  fame. 

30      Someone  said  to  me  the  other  day  that  they  considered 

this  story  to  be  of  a  pestilent  example.     I  am  not  inclined 

to  imagine  we  shall  ever  be  put  into  any  practical  difficulty 

from  a  superfluity  of  Grenvilles.    And  besides,  I  demur  to 

30-165, 19 :  j,  h  (cf.  155, 9-15)- 


ROBERT   Louis    STEVENSON  165 

the  opinion.  The  worth  of  such  actions  is  not  a  thing  to  be 
decided  in  a  quaver  of  sensibility  or  a  flush  of  righteous 
common  sense.  The  man  who  wished  to  make  the  ballads 
of  his  country,  coveted  a  small  matter  compared  to  what 
Richard  Grenville  accomplished.  I  wonder  how  many  5 
people  have  been  inspired  by  this  mad  story,  and  how  many 
battles  have  been  actually  won  for  England  in  the  spirit 
thus  engendered.  It  is  only  with  a  measure  of  habitual 
foolhardiness  that  you  can  be  sure,  in  the  common  run  of 
men,  of  courage  on  a  reasonable  occasion.  An  army  or  a  10 
fleet,  if  it  is  not  led  by  quixotic  fancies,  will  not  be  led 
far  by  terror  of  the  Provost-Marshal.  Even  German  war- 
fare, in  addition  to  maps  and  telegraphs,  is  not  above  em- 
ploying the  "  Wacht  am  Rhein."  Nor  is  it  only  in  the  pro- 
fession of  arms  that  such  stories  may  do  good  to  a  man.  15 
In  this  desperate  and  gleeful  fighting,  whether  it  is  Gren- 
ville or  Benbow,  Hawke  or  Nelson,  who  flies  his  colors  in 
the  ship,  we  see  men  brought  to  the  test  and  giving  proof 
of  what  we  call  heroic  feeling.  Prosperous  humanitarians 
tell  me,  in  my  club  smoking-room,  that  they  are  a  prey  to  20 
prodigious  heroic  feelings,  and  that  it  costs  them  more  no- 
bility of  soul  to  do  nothing  in  particular,  than  would  carry 
on  all  the  wars,  by  sea  or  land,  of  bellicose  humanity.  It 
may  very  well  be  so,  and  yet  not  touch  the  point  in  question. 
For  what  I  desire  is  to  see  some  of  this  nobility  brought  25 
face  to  face  with  me  in  an  inspiriting  achievement.  A  man 
may  talk  smoothly  over  a  cigar  in  my  club  smoking-room 
from  now  to  the  Day  of  Judgment,  without  adding  anything 
to  mankind's  treasury  of  illustrious  and  encouraging  exam- 
ples. It  is  not  over  the  virtues  of  a  curate-and-tea-party  30 
novel,  that  people  are  abashed  into  high  resolutions.  It 
may  be  because  their  hearts  are  crass,  but  to  stir  them  prop- 
erly they  must  have  men  entering  into  glory  with  some 
19-166,  5 :  s,  t. 


166  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

pomp  and  circumstance.  And  that  is  why  these  stories  of 
our  sea-captains,  printed,  so  to  speak,  in  capitals,  and  full 
of  bracing  moral  influence,  are  more  valuable  to  England 
than  any  material  benefit  in  all  the  books  of  political  econ- 
5  omy  between  Westminster  and  Birmingham.  Grenville 
chewing  wine-glasses  at  table  makes  no  very  pleasant  figure, 
any  more  than  a  thousand  other  artists  when  they  are 
viewed  in  the  body,  or  met  in  private  life ;  but  his  work  of 
art,  his  finished  tragedy,  is  an  eloquent  performance;  and 

10 1  contend  it  ought  not  only  to  enliven  men  of  the  sword  as 
they  go  into  battle,  but  send  back  merchant  clerks  with  more 
heart  and  spirit  to  their  bookkeeping  by  double  entry. 

There  is  another  question  which  seems  bound  up  in  this ; 
and  that   is   Temple's  problem:   whether  it   was   wise   of 

15  Douglas  to  burn  with  the  Royal  Oak?  and  by  implication, 
what  it  was  that  made  him  do  so?  Many  will  tell  you  it 
was  the  desire  of  fame. 

"  To   what   do   Caesar  and   Alexander  owe   the   infinite 
grandeur  of  their  renown,  but  to   fortune?     How  many 

20  men  has  she  extinguished  in  the  beginning  of  their  prog- 
ress, of  whom  we  have  no  knowledge;  who  brought  as 
much  courage  to  the  work  as  they,  if  their  adverse  hap  had 
not  cut  them  off  in  the  first  sally  of  their  arms  ?  Amongst 
so  many  and  so  great  dangers,  I  do  not  remember  to  have 

25  anywhere  read  that  Caesar  was  ever  wounded ;  a  thousand 
have  fallen  in  less  dangers  than  the  least  of  these  he  went 
through.  A  great  many  brave  actions  must  be  expected  to 
be  performed  without  witness,  for  one  that  comes  to  some 
notice.  A  man  is  not  always  at  the  top  of  a  breach,  or  at 

30  the  head  of  an  army  in  the  sight  of  his  general,  as  upon 

a  platform.     He  is  often  surprised  between  the  hedge  and 

the  ditch ;  he  must  run  the  hazard  of  his  life  against  a  hen 

roost;  he  must  dislodge  four  rascally  musketeers  out  of  a 

5-12  :  c,  t.  23-167,  2  :  t,  c. 


ROBERT   Louis    STEVENSON  167 

barn ;  he  must  prick  out  single  from  his  party,  as  necessity 
arises,  and  meet  adventures  alone." 

Thus  far  Montaigne,  in  a  characteristic  essay  on  "  Glory." 
Where  death  is  certain,  as  in  the  cases  of  Douglas  or  Gren- 
ville,  it  seems  all  one  from  a  personal  point  of  view.  The  5 
man  who  lost  his  life  against  a  hen  roost  is  in  the  same 
pickle  with  him  who  lost  his  life  against  a  fortified  place  of 
the  first  order.  Whether  he  has  missed  a  peerage  or  only 
the  corporal's  stripes,  it  is  all  one  if  he  has  missed  them  and 
is  quietly  in  the  grave.  It  was  by  a  hazard  that  we  learned  10 
the  conduct  of  the  four  marines  of  the  Wager.  There  was 
no  room  for  these  brave  fellows  in  the  boat,  and  they  were 
left  behind  upon  the  island  to  a  certain  death.  They  were 
soldiers,  they  said,  and  knew  well  enough  it  was  their  busi- 
ness to  die;  and  as  their  comrades  pulled  away  they  stood  15 
upon  the  beach,  gave  three  cheers,  and  cried  "  God  bless 
the  king !  "  Now,  one  or  two  of  those  who  were  in  the  boat 
escaped,  against  all  likelihood,  to  tell  the  story.  That  was 
a  great  thing  for  us;  but  surely  it  cannot,  by  any  possible 
twisting  of  human  speech,  be  construed  into  anything  great  20 
for  the  marines.  You  may  suppose,  if  you  like,  that  they 
died  hoping  their  behavior  would  not  be  forgotten ;  or  you 
may  suppose  they  thought  nothing  on  the  subject,  which  is 
much  more  likely.  What  can  be  the  signification  of  the  word 
"  fame  "  to  a  private  of  marines,  who  cannot  read  and  25 
knows  nothing  of  past  history  beyond  the  reminiscences  of 
his  grandmother?  But  whichever  supposition  you  make, 
the  fact  is  unchanged.  They  died  while  the  question  still 
hung  in  the  balance;  and  I  suppose  their  bones  were  al- 
ready white,  before  the  winds  and  the  waves  and  the  humor  30 
of  Indian  chiefs  and  Spanish  governors  had  decided  whether 
they  were  to  be  unknown  and  useless  martyrs  or  honored 
heroes.  Indeed,  I  believe  this  is  the  lesson:  if  it  is  for 
3-21 :  c.  27-168,  2  :  b,  n. 


168  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

fame  that  men  do  brave  actions,  they  are  only  silly  fellows 
after  all. 

It  is  at  best  but  a  pettifogging,  pickthank  business  to 
decompose  actions  into  little  personal  motives,  and  explain 

5  heroism  away.  The  Abstract  Bagman  will  grow  like  an 
Admiral  at  heart,  not  by  ungrateful  carping,  but  in  a  heat 
of  admiration.  But  there  is  another  theory  of  the  per- 
sonal motive  in  these  fine  sayings  and  doings,  which  I  be- 
lieve to  be  true  and  wholesome.  People  usually  do  things, 

10  and  suffer  martyrdoms,  because  they  have  an  inclination 
that  way.  The  best  artist  is  not  the  man  who  fixes  his  eye 
on  posterity,  but  the  one  who  loves  the  practice  of  his  art. 
And  instead  of  having  a  taste  for  being  successful  mer- 
chants and  retiring  at  thirty,  some  people  have  a  taste  for 

15  high  and  what  we  call  heroic  forms  of  excitement.  If  the 
Admirals  courted  war  like  a  mistress ;  if,  as  the  drum  beat 
to  quarters,  the  sailors  came  gayly  out  of  the  forecastle, — 
it  is  because  a  fight  is  a  period  of  multiplied  and  intense 
experiences,  and,  by  Nelson's  computation,  worth  "  thou- 

20  sands  "  to  anyone  who  has  a  heart  under  his  jacket.  If 
the  marines  of  the  Wager  gave  three  cheers  and  cried  "  God 
bless  the  king,"  it  was  because  they  liked  to  do  things  nobly 
for  their  own  satisfaction.  They  were  giving  their  lives, 
there  was  no  help  for  that;  and  they  made  it  a  point  of 

25  self-respect  to  give  them  handsomely.  And  there  were 
never  four  happier  marines  in  God's  world  than  these  four 
at  that  moment.  If  it  was  worth  thousands  to  be  at  the 
Baltic,  I  wish  a  Benthamite  arithmetician  would  calculate 
how  much  it  was  worth  to  be  one  of  these  four  marines; 

30  or  how  much  their  story  is  worth  to  each  of  us  who  read 
it.  And  mark  you,  undemonstrative  men  would  have  spoiled 
the  situation.  The  finest  action  is  the  better  for  a  piece  of 
purple.  If  the  soldiers  of  the  Birkenhead  had  not  gone 

3-9  :  h.  11-23:0,  h.  23-31:1,0.  31-169,  io:h. 


ROBERT   Louis    STEVENSON  169 

down  in  line,  or  these  marines  of  the  Wager  had  walked 
away  simply  into  the  island,  like  plenty  of  other  brave 
fellows  in  the  like  circumstances,  my  Benthamite  arith- 
metician would  assign  a  far  lower  value  to  the  two  stories. 
We  have  to  desire  a  grand  air  in  our  heroes;  and  such  a  5 
knowledge  of  the  human  stage  as  shall  make  them  put 
the  dots  on  their  own  i's,  and  leave  us  in  no  suspense  as 
to  when  they  mean  to  be  heroic.  And  hence,  we  should 
congratulate  ourselves  upon  the  fact  that  our  Admirals  were 
not  only  great-hearted  but  big-spoken.  10 

The  heroes  themselves  say,  as  often  as  not,  that  fame  is 
their  object;  but  I  do  not  think  that  is  much  to  the  pur- 
pose. People  generally  say  what  they  have  been  taught  to 
say;  that  was  the  catchword  they  were  given  in  youth  to 
express  the  aims  of  their  way  of  life;  and  men  who  are  15 
gaining  great  battles  are  not  likely  to  take  much  trouble  in 
reviewing  their  sentiments  and  the  words  in  which  they 
were  told  to  express  them.  Almost  every  person,  if  you 
will  believe  himself,  holds  a  quite  different  theory  of  life 
from  the  one  on  which  he  is  patently  acting.  And  the  fact  20 
is,  fame  may  be  a  forethought  and  an  afterthought,  but  it 
is  too  abstract  an  idea  to  move  people  greatly  in  moments 
of  swift  and  momentous  decision.  It  is  from  something 
more  immediate,  some  determination  of  blood  to  the  head, 
some  trick  of  the  fancy,  that  the  breach  is  stormed  or  the  25 
bold  word  spoken.  I  am  sure  a  fellow  shooting  an  ugly 
weir  in  a  canoe  has  exactly  as  much  thought  about  fame 
as  most  commanders  going  into. battle;  and  yet  the  action, 
fall  out  how  it  will,  is  not  one  of  those  the  muse  delights 
to  celebrate.  Indeed  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  the  fellow  30 
does  a  thing  so  nameless  and  yet  so  formidable  to  look  at, 
unless  on  the  theory  that  he  likes  it.  I  suspect  that  is  why ; 
and  I  suspect  it  is  at  least  ten  per  cent  of  why  Lord  Bea- 

11-170,4:  k,  j,n. 


170  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

consfield  and  Mr.  Gladstone  have  debated  so  much  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  why  Burnaby  rode  to  Khiva  the 
other  day,  and  why  the  Admirals  courted  war  like  a 
mistress. 

6,  7,  8,  9,  n,  12. 


AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL 
1850- 

TRUTH-HUNTING 
From  "  Obiter  Dicta,"  first  series. 

IT  is  common  knowledge  that  the  distinguishing  char- 
acteristic of  the  day  is  the  zeal  displayed  by  us  in  hunting 
after  truth.  A  really  not  inconsiderable  portion  of  what- 
ever time  we  are  able  to  spare  from  making  or  losing 
money  or  reputation  is  devoted  to  this  sport,  whilst  both  5 
reading  and  conversation  are  largely  impressed  into  the 
same  service. 

Nor  are  there  wanting  those  who  avow  themselves  anx- 
ious to  see  this,  their  favorite  pursuit,  raised  to  the  dignity 
of  a  national  institution.    They  would  have  Truth-hunting  10 
established  and  endowed. 

Mr.  Carlyle  has  somewhere  described  with  great  humor 
the  "  dreadfully  painful "  manner  in  which  Kepler  made  his 
celebrated  calculations  and  discoveries ;  but  our  young  men 
of  talent  fail  to  see  the  joke,  and  take  no  pleasure  in  such  15 
anecdotes.  Truth,  they  feel,  is  not  to  be  had  from  them 
on  any  such  terms.  And  why  should  it  be  ?  Is  it  not  notori- 
ous that  all  who  are  lucky  enough  to  supply  wants  grow 
rapidly  and  enormously  rich ;  and  is  not  truth  a  now  recog- 
nized want  in  ten  thousand  homes — wherever,  indeed,  per-  20 
sons  are  to  be  found  wealthy  enough  to  pay  Mr.  Mudie  a 
guinea  and  so  far  literate  as  to  be  able  to  read?  What, 
save  the  modesty,  is  there  surprising  in  the  demand  now 
made  on  behalf  of  some  young  people,  whose  means  are 

1-17  :  w.  8-1 1  :  w.  12-172,  13  :  a,  j,  k. 
171 


172  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE' 

commensurate  with  their  talents,  that  they  should  be  al- 
lowed, as  a  reward  for  doling  out  monthly  or  quarterly 
portions  of  truth,  to  live  in  houses  rent-free,  have  their 
meals  for  nothing,  and  a  trifle  of  money  besides?  Would 
5  Bass  consent  to  supply  us  with  beer  in  return  for  board 
and  lodging,  we  of  course  defraying  the  actual  cost  of  his 
brewery,  and  allowing  him  some  £300  a  year  for  himself? 
Who,  as  he  read  about  "  Sun-spots,"  or  "  Fresh  Facts  for 
Darwin,"  or  the  "  True  History  of  Modesty  or  Veracity," 
10  showing  how  it  came  about  that  these  high-sounding  vir- 
tues are  held  in  their  present  somewhat  general  esteem, 
would  find  it  in  his  heart  to  grudge  the  admirable  authors 
their  freedom  from  petty  cares? 

But  whether  Truth-hunting  be  ever  established  or  not, 
15  no  one  can  doubt  that  it  is  a  most  fashionable  pastime,  and 
one  which  is  being  pursued  with  great  vigor. 

All  hunting  is  so  far  alike  as  to  lead  one  to  believe  that 

there  must  sometimes  occur  in  Truth-hunting,  just  as  much 

as  in  fox-hunting,  long  pauses  whilst  the  covers  are  being 

20  drawn  in  search  of  the  game,  and  when  thoughts  are  free 

to  range  at  will  in  pursuit  of  far  other  objects  than  those 

giving  their  name  to  the  sport.     If  it  should  chance  to  any 

Truth-hunter,  during  some  "  lull  in  his  'hot  chase,"  whilst, 

for  example,  he  is  waiting  for  the  second  volume  of  an 

25  "  Analysis  of  Religion,"  or  for  the  last  thing  out  on  the 

Fourth  Gospel,  to  take  up  this  book,  and  open  it  at  this 

page,  we  should  like  to  press  him  for  an  answer  to  the 

following  question :  "  Are  you  sure  that  it  is  a  good  thing 

for  you  to  spend  so  much  time  in  speculating  about  matters 

30  outside  your  daily  life  and  walk  ?  " 

Curiosity  is  no  doubt  an  excellent  quality.     In  a  critic 
it  is  especially  excellent.     To  want  to  know  all  about  a 
thing,  and  not  merely  one  man's  account  or  version  of  it; 
14-16  :w,b.  22-30:1.  31-173.  3^  b.  31  :b.  31-173.  *3  :  f»n* 


AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL  173 

to  see  all  round  it,  or,  at  any  rate,  as  far  round  it  as  possi- 
ble; not  to  be  lazy  or  indifferent,  or  easily  put  off,  or 
scared  away — all  this  is  really  very  excellent.  Sir  Fitz 
James  Stephens  professes  very  great  regret  that  we  have 
not  got  Pilate's  account  of  the  events  immediately  preced-  5 
ing  the  Crucifixion.  He  thinks  it  would  throw  great  light 
upon  the  subject;  and  no  doubt,  if  it  had  occurred  to  the 
Evangelists  to  adopt  in  their  narratives  the  method  which 
long  afterwards  recommended  itself  to  the  author  of  "  The 
Ring  and  the  Book,"  we  should  now  be  in  possession  of  10 
a  mass  of  very  curious  information.  But,  excellent  as  all 
this  is  in  the  realm  of  criticism,  the  question  remains,  How 
does  a  restless  habit  of  mind  tell  upon  conduct? 

John  Mill  was  not  one  from  whose  lips  the  advice  "  Stare 
super  antiquas  vias,"  was  often  heard  to  proceed,  and  he  15 
was  by  profession  a  speculator,  yet  in  that  significant  book, 
the  "  Autobiography,"  he  describes  this  age  of  Truth- 
hunters  as  one  "  of  weak  convictions,  paralyzed  intel- 
lects, and  growing  laxity  of  opinions." 

Is  Truth-hunting  one  of  those  active  mental  habits  which,  20 
as  Bishop  Butler  tells  us,  intensify  their  effects  by  constant 
use;  and  are  weak  convictions,  paralyzed  intellects,  and 
laxity  of  opinions  amongst  the  effects  of  Truth-hunting  on 
the  majority  of  minds?  These  are  not  unimportant  ques- 
tions. 25 

Let  us  consider  briefly  the  probable  effects  of  speculative 
habits  on  conduct. 

The  discussion  of  a  question  of  conduct  has  the  great 
charm  of  justifying,  if  indeed  not  requiring,  personal  illus- 
tration; and  this  particular  question  is  well  illustrated  by  30 
instituting  a  comparison  between  the  life  and  character  of 
Charles  Lamb  and  those  of  some  of  his  distinguished 
friends. 

26,  27 :  b, 


174  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

Personal  illustration,  especially  when  it  proceeds  by  way 
of  comparison,  is  always  dangerous,  and  the  dangers  are 
doubled  when  the  subjects  illustrated  and  compared  are 
favorite  authors.  It  behooves  us  to  proceed  warily  in 

5  this  matter.  A  dispute  as  to  the  respective  merits  of  Gray 
and  Collins  has  been  known  to  result  in  a  visit  to  an  at- 
torney and  the  revocation  of  a  will.  An  avowed  inability 
to  see  anything  in  Miss  Austen's  novels  is  reported  to  have 
proved  destructive  of  an  otherwise  good  chance  of  an  Indian 

10  judgeship.  I  believe,  however,  I  run  no  great  risk  in  assert- 
ing that,  of  all  English  authors,  Charles  Lamb  is  the  one 
loved  most  warmly  and  emotionally  by  his  admirers, 
amongst  whom  I  reckon  only  those  who  are  as  familiar  with 
the  four  volumes  of  his  "  Life  and  Letters  "  as  with  "  Elia." 

15  But  how  does  he  illustrate  the  particular  question  now 
engaging  our  attention  ? 

Speaking  of  his  sister  Mary,  who,  as  everyone  knows, 
throughout  "  Elia  "  is  called  his  Cousin  Bridget,  he  says : 

"  It  has  been  the  lot  of  my  cousin,  oftener,  perhaps,  than 
20  I  could  have  wished,  to  have  had  for  her  associates  and 
mine  freethinkers,  leaders  and  disciples  of  novel  philoso- 
phies and  systems,  but  she  neither  wrangles  with  nor  ac- 
cepts their  opinions." 

Nor  did  her  brother.    He  lived  his  life  cracking  his  little 
25  jokes  and  reading  his  great  folios,  neither  wrangling  nor 
accepting  the  opinions  of  the  friends  he  loved  to  see  about 
him.     To  a  contemporary  stranger  it  might  well  have  ap- 
peared as  if  his  life  were  a  frivolous  and  useless  one  as 
compared  with  those  of  these  philosophers  and  thinkers. 
30  They  discussed  their  great  schemes  and  affected  to  probe 
deep   mysteries,    and   were   constantly   asking,    "  What    is 
Truth  ?  "    He  sipped  his  glass,  shuffled  his  cards,  and  was 

i-i6:d,  v.  15,  i6:b.  24-27  :  w.  27-175,  4  :  x,  o. 


AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL  175 

content  with  the  humbler  inquiry,  "  What  is  trumps  ?  "  But 
to  us,  looking  back  upon  that  little  group,  and  knowing 
what  we  now  do  about  each  member  of  it,  no  such  mistake 
is  possible.  To  us  it  is  plain  beyond  all  question,  judged 
by  whatever  standard  of  excellence  it  is  possible  for  any  5 
reasonable  human  being  to  take,  Lamb  stands  head  and 
shoulders  a  better  man  than  any  of  them.  No  need  to 
stop  to  compare  him  with  Godwin,  or  Hazlitt,  or  Lloyd; 
let  us  boldly  put  him  in  the  scale  with  one  whose  fame 
is  in  all  the  churches — with  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  10 
"  logician,  metaphysician,  bard." 

There  are  some  men  whom  to  abuse  is  pleasant.  Coleridge 
is  not  one  of  them.  How  gladly  we  would  love  the  author 
of  "  Christabel "  if  we  could !  But  the  thing  is  flatly  im- 
possible. His  was  an  unlovely  character.  The  sentence  15 
passed  upon  him  by  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  (parenthetically, 
in  one  of  the  "  Essays  in  Criticism  ") — "  Coleridge  had  no 
morals  " — is  no  less  just  than  pitiless.  As  we  gather  in- 
formation about  him  from  numerous  quarters,  we  find  it 
impossible  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  he  was  a  man  neglect-  20 
ful  of  restraint,  irresponsive  to  the  claims  of  those  who 
had  every  claim  upon  him,  willing  to  receive,  slow  to 
give. 

In  early  manhood  Coleridge  planned  a  Pantisocracy 
where  all  the  virtues  were  to  thrive.  Lamb  did  something  25 
far  more  difficult:  he  played  cribbage  every  night  with  his 
imbecile  father,  whose  constant  stream  of  querulous  talk 
and  fault-finding  might  well  have  goaded  a  far  stronger  man 
into  practicing  and  justifying  neglect. 

That  Lamb,  with  all  his  admiration  for  Coleridge,  was  30 
well   aware  of  dangerous   tendencies   in  his  character,   is 
made  apparent  by  many  letters,  notably  by  one  written  in 
1796,  in  which  he  says: 

4-1 1 :  q.  12,23:  j,  v.  24-29  :  x. 


176  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

"  O  my  friend,  cultivate  the  filial   feelings !  and  let  no 
man  think  himself  released  from  the  kind  charities  of  rela- 
tionship: these  are  the  best  foundation  for  every  species  of 
benevolence.    I  rejoice  to  hear  that  you  are  reconciled  with 
5  all  your  relations." 

This  surely  is  as  valuable  an  "  aid  to  reflection  "  as  any 
supplied  by  the  Highgate  seer. 

Lamb  gave  but  little  thought  to  the  wonderful  difference 
between  the  "  reason  "  and  the  "  understanding."  He  pre- 

10  ferred  old  plays — an  odd  diet,  some  may  think  on  which 
to  feed  the  virtues;  but,  however  that  may  be,  the  noble 
fact  remains,  that  he,  poor,  frail  boy !  ( for  he  was  no  more 
when  trouble  first  assailed  him)  stooped  down  and,  without 
sigh  or  sign,  took  upon  his  own  shoulders  the  whole  burden 

15  of  a  life-long  sorrow. 

Coleridge  married.  Lamb,  at  the  bidding  of  duty,  re- 
mained single,  wedding  himself  to  the  sad  fortunes  of  his 
father  and  sister.  Shall  we  pity  him?  No;  he  had  his 
reward — the  surpassing  reward  that  is  only  within  the 

20  power  of  literature  to  bestow.  It  was  Lamb,  and  not 
Coleridge,  who  wrote  "  Dream-Children :  a  Reverie  " : 

"  Then  I  told  how  for  seven  long  years,  in  hope  some- 
times, sometimes  in  despair,  yet  persisting  ever,  I  courted 
the  fair  Alice  W n ;  and  as  much  as  children  could  un- 

25  derstand,  I  explained  to  them  what  coyness  and  difficulty 
and  denial  meant  in  maidens — when,  suddenly  turning  to 
Alice,  the  soul  of  the  first  Alice  looked  out  at  her  eyes 
with  such  a  reality  of  representment  that  I  became  in  doubt 
which  of  them  stood  before  me,  or  whose  that  bright  hair 

30  was ;  and  while  I  stood  gazing,  both  the  children  gradually 
grew  fainter  to  my  view,  receding  and  still  receding,  till 
nothing  at  last  but  two  mournful  features  were  seen  in  the 
uttermost  distance,  which,  without  speech,  strangely  im- 
pressed upon  me  the  effects  of  speech.  *  We  are  not  of 

6-7  :b.  8-1 5  :  x. 


AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL  177 

Alice  nor  of  thee,  nor  are  we  children  at  all.  The  children 
of  Alice  call  Bartrum  father.  We  are  nothing,  less  than 
nothing,  and  dreams.  We  are  only  what  might  have  been.' '' 

Godwin  !     Hazlitt !     Coleridge  !     Where  now  are  their 
"  novel  philosophies   and   systems  "  ?     Bottled  moonshine,  5 
which  does  not  improve  by  keeping. 

"  Only  the  actions  of  the  just 
Smell  sweet  and  blossom  in  the  dust." 

Were  we  disposed  to  admit  that  Lamb  would  in  all  prob- 
ability have  been  as  good  a  man  as  everyone  agrees  he  was  10 
— as  kind  to  his  father,  as  full  of  self-sacrifice  for  the  sake 
of  his  sister,  as  loving  and  ready  a  friend — even  though 
he  had  paid  more  heed  to  current  speculations,  it  is  yet 
not  without  use  in  a  time  like  this,  when  so  much  stress  is 
laid  upon  anxious  inquiry  into  the  mysteries  of  soul  and  15 
body,  to  point  out  how  this  man  attained  to  a  moral  ex- 
cellence   denied    to    his    speculative    contemporaries;    per- 
formed duties  from  which  they,  good  men  as  they  were, 
would  one  and  all  have  shrunk;  how,  in  short,  he  con- 
trived to  achieve  what  no  one  of  his  friends,  not  even  the  20 
immaculate  Wordsworth  or  the  precise  Southey,  achieved 
— the  living  of  a  life,  the  records  of  which  are  inspiring 
to  read,  and  are  indeed  "  the  presence  of  a  good  diffused ;  " 
and  managed  to  do  it  all  without  either  "  wrangling  with  or 
accepting "  the  opinions  that  "  hurtled  in  the  air  "  about  25 
him. 

But  was  there  no  relation  between  his  unspeculative 
habit  of  mind  and  his  honest,  unwavering  service  of  duty, 
whose  voice  he  ever  obeyed  as  the  ship  the  rudder?  It 
would  be  difficult  to  name  anyone  more  unlike  Lamb,  in  30 
many  aspects  of  character,  than  Dr.  Johnson,  for  whom 
he  had  (mistakenly)  no  warm  regard;  but  they  closely 

4-6  :  x,  o.  9-29  ;  b,  i,  c,  j.  27-178,  5  :  o,  c. 


178  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

resemble  one  another  in  their  indifference  to  mere  specula- 
tion about  things — if  things  they  can  be  called — outside  our 
human  walk;  in  their  hearty  love  of  honest  earthly  life, 
in  their  devotion  to  their  friends,  their  kindness  to  de- 
5  pendents,  and  in  their  obedience  to  duty.  What  caused 
each  of  them  the  most  pain  was  the  recollection  of  a  past 
unkindness.  The  poignancy  of  Dr.  Johnson's  grief  on  one 
such  recollection  is  historical;  and  amongst  Lamb's  letters 
are  to  be  found  several  in  which,  with  vast  depths  of  feeling, 

10  he  bitterly  upbraids  himself  for  neglect  of  old  friends. 

Nothing  so  much  tends  to  blur  moral  distinctions,  and 
to  obliterate  plain  duties,  as  the  free  indulgence  of  specu- 
lative habits.  We  must  all  know  many  a  sorry  scrub  who 
has  fairly  talked  himself  into  the  belief  that  nothing  but 

15  his  intellectual  difficulties  prevents  him  from  being  another 
St.  Francis.  We  think  we  could  suggest  a  few  score  of 
other  obstacles. 

Would  it  not  be  better  for  most  people,  if,  instead  of 
stuffing  their  heads  with  controversy,  they  were  to  devote 

20  their  scanty  leisure  to  reading  books,  such  as,  to  name 
one  only,  Kaye's  "  History  of  the  Sepoy  War,"  which  is 
crammed  full  of  activities  and  heroisms,  and  which  force 
upon  the  reader's  mind  the  healthy  conviction  that,  after 
all,  whatever  mysteries  may  appertain  to  mind  and  matter, 

25  and  notwithstanding  grave  doubts  as  to  the  authenticity  of 
the  Fourth  Gospel,  it  is  bravery,  truth  and  honor,  loyalty 
and  hard  work,  each  man  at  his  post,  which  make  this 
planet  inhabitable. 

In  these  days  of  champagne  and  shoddy,  of  display  of 

30  teacups  and  rotten  foundations — especially,  too,  now  that 
the  "  nexus  "  of  "  cash  payment,"  which  was  to  bind  man 
to  man  in  the  bonds  of  a  common  pecuniary  interest,  is 
hopelessly  broken — it  becomes  plain  that  the  real  wants  of 

1 1-17  :  c,  x,  u.  18-28  :  b,  x,  u.  29-179,  3  :  w,  x. 


AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL  179 

the  age  are  not  analyses  of  religious  belief,  nor  discussions 
as  to  whether  "  Person  "  or  "  Stream  of  Tendency  "  are 
the  apter  words  to  describe  God  by ;  but  a  steady  supply  of 
honest,  plain-sailing  men  who  can  be  safely  trusted  with 
small  sums,  and  to  do  what  in  them  lies  to  maintain  the  5 
honor  of  the  various  professions,  and  to  restore  the  credit 
of  English  workmanship.  We  want  Lambs,  not  Cole- 
ridges.  The  verdict  to  be  striven  for  is  not  "  Well  guessed," 
but  "  Well  done." 

All  our  remarks  are  confined  to  the  realm  of  opinion.  10 
Faith  may  be  well  left  alone,  for  she  is,  to  give  her  her 
due,  our  largest  manufacturer  of  good  works,  and  when- 
ever her  furnaces  are  blown  out  morality  suffers. 

But  speculation  has  nothing  to  do  with  faith.  The  region 
of  speculation  is  the  region  of  opinion,  and  a  hazy,  lazy,  15 
delightful  region  it  is;  good  to  talk  in,  good  to  smoke  in, 
peopled  with  pleasant  fancies  and  charming  ideas,  strange 
analogies  and  killing  jests.  How  quickly  the  time  passes 
there!  how  well  it  seems  spent!  The  Philistines  are  all 
outside;  everyone  is  reasonable  and  tolerant  and  good-  20 
tempered ;  you  think  and  scheme  and  talk,  and  look  at  every- 
thing in  a  hundred  ways  and  from  all  possible  points  of 
view ;  and  it  is  not  till  the  company  breaks  up  and  the  lights 
are  blown  out,  and  you  are  left  alone  with  silence,  that  the 
doubt  occurs  to  you,  What  is  the  good  of  it  all?  25 

Where  is  the  actuary  who  can  appraise  the  value  of  a 
man's  opinions  ?  "  When  we  speak  of  a  man's  opinions," 
says  Dr.  Newman,  "  what  do  we  mean  but  the  collection 
of  notions  he  happens  to  have  ?  "  Happens  to  have  ?  How 
did  he  come  by  them  ?  It  is  the  knowledge  we  all  possess  of  30 
the  sorts  of  ways  in  which  men  get  their  opinions  that 
makes  us  so  little  affected  in  our  own  minds  by  those  of 
men  for  whose  characters  and  intellects  we  may  have  great 

3-9  :  x.  10-13  :  e.  14  :  b.  14-25  :  c,  x,  u.  26-30  :  x.  26-180.  n  :  j,  k. 


i8o  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

admiration.  A  sturdy  Nonconformist  minister,  who  thinks 
Mr.  Gladstone  the  ablest  and  ripest  scholar  within  the 
three  kingdoms,  is  no  whit  shaken  in  his  Nonconformity 
by  knowing  that  his  idol  has  written  in  defense  of  the 
5  Apostolical  Succession,  and  believes  in  special  sacramental 
graces.  Mr.  Gladstone  may  have  been  a  great  student  of 
church  history,  whilst  Nonconformist  reading  under  that 
head  usually  begins  with  Luther's  Theses — but  what  of 
that  ?  Is  it  not  all  explained  by  the  fact  that  Mr.  Gladstone 

10  was  at  Oxford  in  1831  ?  So  at  least  the  Nonconformist 
minister  will  think. 

The  admission  frankly  made,  that  these  remarks  are 
confined  to  the  realms  of  opinion,  prevents  me  from  urging 
on  everyone  my  prescription,  but,  with  two  exceptions  to 

15  be  immediately  named,  I  believe  it  would  be  found  generally 
useful.  It  may  be  made  up  thus :  "  As  much  reticence  as  is 
consistent  with  good  breeding  upon,  and  a  wisely  tempered 
indifference  to,  the  various  speculative  questions  now  agi- 
tated in  our  midst." 

20  This  prescription  will  be  found  to  liberate  the  mind  from 
all  kinds  of  cloudy  vapors  which  obscure  the  mental  vision 
and  conceal  from  men  their  real  position,  and  would  also 
set  free  a  great  deal  of  time  which  might  be  profitably 
spent  in  quite  other  directions. 

25  The  first  of  these  two  exceptions  I  have  alluded  to  is  of 
those  who  possess — whether  honestly  come  by  or  not  we 
cannot  stop  to  inquire — strong  convictions  upon  these  very 
questions.  These  convictions  they  must  be  allowed  to 
iterate  and  reiterate,  and  to  proclaim  that  in  them  is  to  be 

30  found  the  secret  of  all  this  (otherwise)  unintelligible  world. 

The  second  exception  is  that  of  those  who  pursue  Truth 

as  of  a  divine  compulsion,  and  who  can  be  likened  only  to 

the  nympholepts  of  old;  those  unfortunates  who,  whilst 

31-181, 5 : 1,  d, ». 


AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL  181 

carelessly  strolling  amidst  sylvan  shades,  caught  a  hasty 
glimpse  of  the  flowing  robe  or  even  of  the  gracious  counte- 
nance of  some  spiritual  inmate  of  the  woods,  in  whose 
pursuit  their  whole  lives  were  ever  afterwards  fruitlessly 
spent.  5 

The  nympholepts  of  Truth  are  profoundly  interesting 
figures  in  the  world's  history,  but  their  lives  are  melancholy 
reading,  and  seldom  fail  to  raise  a  crop  of  gloomy  thoughts. 
Their  finely  touched  spirits  are  not  indeed  liable  to  succumb 
to  the  ordinary  temptations  of  life,  and  they  thus  escape  10 
the  evils  which  usually  follow  in  the  wake  of  speculation; 
but  what  is  their  labor's  reward? 

Readers  of  Dr.  Newman  will  remember,  and  will  thank 
me  for  calling  it  to  mind,  an  exquisite  passage,  too  long  to 
be  quoted,  in  which,  speaking  as  a  Catholic  to  his  late  15 
Anglican  associates,  he  reminds  them  how  he  once  par- 
ticipated in  their  pleasures  and  shared  their  hopes,  and 
thus  concludes : 

"  When,  too,  shall  I  not  feel  the  soothing  recollection  of 
those  dear  years  which  I  spent  in  retirement,  in  preparation  20 
for  my  deliverance  from  Egypt,  asking  for  light,  and  by 
degrees  getting  it,  with  less  of  temptation  in  my  heart  and 
sin  on  my  conscience  than  ever  before  ?  " 

But  the  passage  is  sad  as  well  as  exquisite,  showing  to 
us,  as  it  does,  one  who  from  his  earliest  days  has  rejoiced  25 
in  a  faith  in  God,  intense,  unwavering,  constant;  harassed 
by  distressing  doubts,  he  carries  them  all,  in  the  devotion 
of  his  faith,  the  warmth  of  his  heart,  and  the  purity  of 
his  life,  to  the  throne  where  Truth  sits  in  state;  living 
he  tells  us,  in  retirement,  and  spending  great  portions  of  30 
every  day  on  his  knees ;  and  yet — we  ask  the  question  with 
all  reverence — what  did  Dr.  Newman  get  in  exchange  for 
his  prayers? 

6-12  :  e,  x,  n.  24-33  '  x>  n.  «• 


182  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

"  I  think  it  impossible  to  withstand  the  evidence  for  the 
liquefaction  of  the  blood  of  St.  Januarius  at  Naples,  or  for 
the  motion  of  the  eyes  of  the  pictures  of  the  Madonna  in 
the  Roman  States.  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  the  material 

5  of  the  Lombard  Cross  at  Monza,  and  I  do  not  see  why  the 
Holy  Coat  at  Treves  may  not  have  been  what  it  professes 
to  be.  I  firmly  believe  that  portions  of  the  True  Cross  are 
at  Rome  and  elsewhere,  that  the  Crib  of  Bethlehem  is  at 
Rome,  and  the  bodies  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul;  also  I 

10  firmly  believe  that  the  relics  of  the  Saints  are  doing  in- 
numerable miracles  and  graces  daily.  I  firmly  believe  that 
before  now  Saints  have  raised  the  dead  to  life,  crossed  the 
sea  without  vessels,  multiplied  grain  and  bread,  cured  incu- 
rable diseases,  and  stopped  the  operations  of  the  laws  of 

15  the  universe  in  a  multitude  of  ways." 

So  writes  Dr.  Newman,  with  that  candor,  that  love  of 
putting  the  case  most  strongly  against  himself,  which  is 
only  one  of  the  lovely  characteristics  of  the  man  whose 
long  life  has  been  a  miracle  of  beauty  and  grace,  and  who 

20  has  contrived  to  instil  into  his  very  controversies  more  of 
the  spirit  of  Christ  than  most  men  can  find  room  for  in 
their  prayers.  But  the  dilemma  is  an  awkward  one.  Does 
the  Madonna  wink,  or  is  Heaven  deaf? 

Oh,  spirit  of  Truth,  where  wert  thou,  when  the  remorse- 

25  less  deep  of  superstition  closed  over  the  head  of  John 
Henry  Newman,  who  surely  deserved  to  be  thy  best-loved 
son? 

But  this  is  a  digression.  With  the  nympholepts  of  Truth 
we  have  nought  to  do.  They  must  be  allowed  to  pursue 

30  their  lonely  and  devious  paths,  and  though  the  records  of 
their  wanderings,  their  conflicting  conclusions,  and  their 
widely-parted  resting-places  may  fill  us  with  despair,  still 
they  are  witnesses  whose  testimony  we  could  ill  afford  to 
lose. 

35      But  there  are  not  many  nympholepts.    The  symptoms  of 

16-22  :  b,  i.  22,  23  :  b,  w.  24-27  :  b.  28-34  :  c,  n. 


AUGUSTINE  BIRRELL  183 

the  great  majority  of  our  modern  Truth-hunters  are  very 
different,  as  they  will,  with  their  frank  candor,  be  the  first 
to  admit.  They  are  free  "  to  drop  their  swords  and  dag- 
gers "  whenever  so  commanded,  and  it  is  high  time  they  did. 

With  these  two  exceptions  I  think  my  prescription  will  5 
be  found  of  general  utility,  and  likely  to  promote  a  healthy 
flow  of  good  works. 

I  had  intended  to  say  something  as  to  the  effect  of  specu- 
lative habits  upon  the  intellect,  but  cannot  now  do  so.  The 
following  shrewd  remark  of  Mr.  Latham's  in  his  interesting  10 
book  on  the  "  Action  of  Examinations  "  may,  however,  be 
quoted;  its  bearing  will  be  at  once  seen,  and  its  truth 
recognized  by  many : 

"  A  man  who  has  been  thus  provided  with  views  and 
acute  observations  may  have  destroyed  in  himself  the  germs  15 
of  that  power  which  he  simulates.  He  might  have  had  a 
thought  or  two  now  and  then  if  he  had  been  let  alone,  but 
if  he  is  made  first  to  aim  at  a  standard  of  thought  above 
his  years,  and  then  finds  he  can  get  the  sort  of  thoughts 
he  wants  without  thinking,  he  is  in  fair  way  to  be  spoiled."  20 

5-7 '  w. 
x»  2,  3,  6,  7.  9.   n,   12,   14. 


H.  G.  WELLS 
1866- 

ADOLESCENCE 
Part  of  Chapter  IV  of  "The  New  Machiavelli " » 

§1 

I  FIND  it  very  difficult  to  trace  how  form  was  added  to 
form  and  interpretation  followed  interpretation  in  my  ever- 
spreading,  ever-deepening,  ever-multiplying,  and  enriching 
vision  of  this  world  into  which  I  had  been  born.  Every 

5  day  added  its  impressions,  its  hints,  its  subtle  explications 
to  the  growing  understanding.  Day  after  day  the  living 
interlacing  threads  of  a  mind  weave  together.  Every  morn- 
ing now  for  three  weeks  and  more  (for  to-day  is  Thursday 
and  I  started  on  a  Tuesday)  I  have  been  trying  to  convey 

io  some  idea  of  the  factors  and  early  influences  by  which  my 
particular  scrap  of  subjective  tapestry  was  shaped,  to  show 
the  child  playing  on  the  nursery  floor,  the  son  perplexed 
by  his  mother,  gazing  aghast  at  his  dead  father,  exploring 
interminable  suburbs,  touched  by  the  first  intimations  of 

15  the  sexual  mystery,  coming  in  with  a  sort  of  confused 
avidity  toward  the  centers  of  the  life  of  London.  It  is 
only  by  such  an  effort  to  write  it  down  that  one  realizes 
how  marvelously  crowded,  how  marvelously  analytical  and 
synthetic  those  ears  must  be.  One  begins  with  the  little 

20  child  to  whom  the  sky  is  a  roof  of  blue,  the  world  a  screen 
1  Copyright,  1911,  by  Duffield  &  Company,  New  York. 
1-6  :  c,  x.  6-16  :  e,  a,  x.  19-185,  8  :  a,  c,  e,  h. 
184 


H.  G.  WELLS  185 

of  opaque  and  disconnected  facts,  the  home  a  thing  eternal, 
and  "  being  good  "  just  simple  obedience  to  unquestioned 
authority;  and  one  comes  at  last  to  the  vast  world  of  one's 
adult  perception,  pierced  deep  by  flaring  searchlights  of  par- 
tial understanding,  here  massed  by  mists,  here  refracted  5 
and  distorted  through  half-translucent  veils,  here  showing 
broad  prospects  and  limitless  vistas,  and  here  impenetrably 
dark. 

I  recall  phases  of  deep  speculation,  doubts,  and  even 
prayers  by  night,  and  strange  occasions  when  by  a  sort  of  10 
hypnotic  contemplation  of  nothingness  I  sought  to  pierce 
the  web  of  appearances  about  me.  It  is  hard  to  measure 
these  things  in  receding  perspective,  and  now  I  cannot 
trace,  so  closely  has  mood  succeeded  and  overlaid  and 
obliterated  mood,  the  phases  by  which  an  utter  horror  of  15 
death  was  replaced  by  the  growing  realization  of  its  neces- 
sity and  dignity.  Difficulty  of  the  imagination  with  infinite 
space,  infinite  time,  entangled  my  mind ;  and  moral  distress 
for  the  pain  and  suffering  of  bygone  ages  that  made  all 
thought  of  reformation  in  the  future  seem  but  the  grim-  20 
mest  irony  upon  now  irreparable  wrongs.  Many  an  intri- 
cate perplexity  of  these  broadening  years  did  not  so  much 
get  settled  as  cease  to  matter.  Life  crowded  me  away 
from  it. 

I  have  confessed  myself  a  temerarious  theologian,  and  25 
in  that  passage  from  boyhood  to  manhood  I  ranged  widely 
in  my  search  for  some  permanently  satisfying  Truth.    That, 
too,  ceased  after  a  time  to  be  urgently  interesting.    I  came 
at  last  into  a  phase  that  endures  to  this  day,  of  absolute 
tranquillity,  of  absolute  confidence  in  whatever  that  Incom-  30 
prehensible  Comprehensive  which  must  needs  be  the  sub- 
stratum of  all  things,  may  be.    Feeling  of  It,  feeling  by  it, 
I  cannot  feel  afraid  of  it.     I  think  I  had  got  quite  clearly 

12-24  :  v.  23,  24  :  b.  28-186,  7  :  c,  q. 


i86  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

and  finally  to  that  adjustment  long  before  my  Cambridge 
days  were  done.  I  am  sure  that  the  evil  in  life  is  transi- 
tory and  finite  like  an  accident  or  distress  in  the  nursery; 
that  God  is  my  Father  and  that  I  may  trust  Him,  even 
5  though  life  hurts  so  that  one  must  needs  cry  out  at  it, 
even  though  it  shows  no  consequence  but  failure,  no  prom- 
ise but  pain.  .  .  . 

But  while  I  was  fearless  of  theology  I  must  confess  it 
was  comparatively  late  before  I  faced  and  dared  to  probe 

10  the  secrecies  of  sex.  I  had  an  instinctive  perception  that 
it  would  be  a  large  and  difficult  thing  in  my  life,  but  my 
early  training  was  all  in  the  direction  of  regarding  it  as 
an  irrelevant  thing,  as  something  disconnected  from  all  the 
broad  significances  of  life,  as  hostile  and  disgraceful  in  its 

15  quality.  The  world  was  never  so  emasculated  in  thought, 
I  suppose,  as  it  was  in  the  Victorian  time.  .  .  . 

I  was  afraid  to  think  either  of  sex  or  (what  I  have  always 
found  inseparable  from  a  kind  of  sexual  emotion)  beauty. 
Even  as  a  boy  I  knew  the  thing  as  a  haunting  and  alluring 

20  mystery  that  I  tried  to  keep  away  from.  Its  dim  presence 
obsessed  me  none  the  less  for  all  the  extravagant  decency, 
the  stimulating  silences  of  my  upbringing.  .  .  . 

The  plaster  Venuses  and  Apollos  that  used  to  adorn  the 
vast  aisle  and  huge  gray  terraces  of  the  Crystal  Palace 

25  were  the  first  intimations  of  the  beauty  of  the  body  that 
ever  came  into  my  life.  As  I  write  of  it  I  feel  again  the 
shameful  attraction  of  those  gracious  forms.  I  used  to 
look  at  them  not  simply,  but  curiously  and  askance.  Once 
at  least  in  my  later  days  at  Penge,  I  spent  a  shilling  in 

30  admission  chiefly  for  the  sake  of  them.  .   .   . 

The  strangest  thing  of  all  my  odd  and  solitary  upbring- 
ing seems  to  me  now  that  swathing  up  of  all  the  splendors 
of  the  flesh,  that  strange  combination  of  fanatical  terror- 

8-16  :  x,  m.  31-187,  6  :  c,  a,  h. 


H.  G.  WELLS  187 

ism  and  shyness  that  fenced  me  about  with  prohibitions. 
It  caused  me  to  grow  up,  I  will  not  say  blankly  ignorant, 
but  with  an  ignorance  blurred  and  dishonored  by  shame, 
by  enigmatical  warnings,  by  cultivated  aversions,  an  ig- 
norance in  which  a  fascinated  curiosity  and  desire  struggled  5 
like  a  thing  in  a  net.  I  knew  so  little  and  I  felt  so  much. 
There  was  indeed  no  Aphrodite  at  all  in  my  youthful 
Pantheon,  but  instead  there  was  a  mysterious  and  minatory 
gap.  I  have  told  how  at  last  a  new  Venus  was  born  in 
my  imagination  out  of  gas  lamps  and  the  twilight,  a  Venus  10 
with  a  cockney  accent  and  dark  eyes  shining  out  of  the  dusk, 
a  Venus  who  was  a  warm,  passions-stirring  atmosphere 
rather  than  incarnation  in  a  body.  And  I  have  told,  too, 
how  I  bought  a  picture. 

All  this  was  a  thing  apart  from  the  rest  of  my  life,  a  15 
locked  avoided  chamber.  .   .   . 

It  was  not  until  my  last  year  at  Trinity  that  I  really 
broke  down  the  barriers  of  this  unwholesome  silence  and 
brought  my  secret  broodings  to  the  light  of  day.  Then  a 
little  set  of  us  plunged  suddenly  into  what  we  called  at  first  20 
sociological  discussion.  I  can  still  recall  even  the  physical 
feeling  of  those  first  tentative  talks.  I  remember  them 
mostly  as  occurring  in  the  rooms  of  Ted  Hatherleigh,  who 
kept  at  the  corner  by  the  Trinity  great  gate,  but  we  also 
used  to  talk  a  great  deal  at  a  man's  in  King's,  a  man  named,  25 
if  I  remember  rightly,  Redmayne.  The  atmosphere  at 
Hatherleigh's  rooms  was  a  haze  of  tobacco  smoke  against 
a  background  brown  and  deep.  He  professed  himself  a 
socialist  with  anarchistic  leanings — he  had  suffered  the  mar- 
tyrdom of  ducking  for  it — and  a  huge  French  May-day  30 
poster  displaying  a  splendid  proletarian  in  red  and  black 
on  a  barricade  against  a  flaring  orange  sky,  dominated  his 
decorations.  Hatherleigh  affected  a  fine  untidiness,  and  all 
6:b.  7-14:6,  h.  15,  i6:b.  21-33:!. 


i88  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

the  place,  even  the  floor,  was  littered  with  books,  for  the 
most  part  open  and  face  downward;  deeper  darknesses 
were  supplied  by  a  discarded  gown  and  our  caps,  all  con- 
scientiously battered,  Hatherleigh's  flopped  like  an  ele- 
5  phant's  ear  and  inserted  quill  pens  supported  the  corner 
of  mine;  the  high  lights  of  the  picture  came  chiefly  as 
reflections  from  his  checkered  blue  mugs  full  of  audit  ale. 
We  sat  on  oak  chairs,  except  the  four  or  five  who  crowded 
on  a  capacious  settle,  we  drank  a  lot  of  beer  and  were 

10  often  fuddled,  and  occasionally  quite  drunk,  and  we  all 
smoked  reckless-looking  pipes, — there  was  a  transient 
fashion  among  us  for  corn  cobs  for  which  Mark  Twain,  I 
think,  was  responsible.  Our  little  excesses  with  liquor  were 
due  far  more  to  conscience  than  appetite,  indicated  chiefly 

15  a  resolve  to  break  away  from  restraints  that  we  suspected 
were  keeping  us  off  the  instructive  knife-edges  of  life. 
Hatherleigh  was  a  good  Englishman  of  the  premature  type, 
with  a  red  face,  a  lot  of  hair,  a  deep  voice,  and  an  explosive 
plunging  manner,  and  it  was  he  who  said  one  evening — 

20  Heaven  knows  how  we  got  to  it — "  Look  here,  you  know, 
it's  all  Rot,  this  Shutting  Up  about  Women.  We  ought  to 
talk  about  them.  What  are  we  going  to  do  about  them? 
It's  got  to  come.  We're  all  festering  inside  about  it.  Let's 
out  with  it.  There's  too  much  Decency  altogether  about 

25  this  Infernal  University !  " 

We  rose  to  this  challenge  a  little  awkwardly  and  our  first 
talk  was  clumsy,  there  were  flushed  faces  and  red  ears, 
and  I  remember  Hatherleigh  broke  out  into  a  monologue 
on  decency.  "  Modesty  and  Decency,"  said  Hatherleigh, 

30  "  are  Oriental  vices.  The  Jews  brought  them  to  Europe. 
They're  Semitic,  just  like  our  monasticism  here  and  the  se- 
clusion of  women  and  mutilating  the  dead  on  a  battlefield. 
And  all  that  sort  of  thing." 

1-13:  w.  13-25:  e,  x,  n. 


H.  G.  WELLS  189 

Hatherleigh's  mind  progressed  by  huge  leaps,  leaps  that 
were  usually  wildly  inaccurate,  and  for  a  time  we  engaged 
hotly  upon  the  topic  of  those  alleged  mutilations  and  the 
Semitic  responsibility  for  decency.  Hatherleigh  tried  hard 
to  saddle  the  Semitic  race  with  the  less  elegant  war  cus-  5 
toms  of  the  Soudan  and  the  northwest  frontier  of  India, 
and  quoted  Doughty,  at  that  time  a  little-known  author,  and 
Cunninghame  Graham  to  show  that  the  Arab  was  worse 
than  a  county-town  spinster  in  his  regard  for  respectability. 
But  his  case  was  too  preposterous,  and  Esmeer,  with  his  10 
shrill  penetrating  voice  and  his  way  of  pointing  with  all 
four  long  ringers  flat  together,  carried  the  point  against 
him.  He  quoted  Cato  and  Roman  law  and  the  monasteries 
of  Thibet. 

"  Well,  anyway,"  said  Hatherleigh,  escaping  from  our  15 
hands  like  an  intellectual  frog,  "  Semitic  or  not,  I've  got  no 
use  for  decency."  l 

A  small  fresh-colored  man  in  gray  objected. 

"  Well,"  exploded  Hatherleigh,  "  if  that  isn't  so  what  the 
deuce  are  we  up  here  for?  Instead  of  working  in  mines?  20 
If  some  things  aren't  going  to  be  thought  about  ever! 
We've  got  the  privilege  of  all  these  extra  years  for  getting 
things  straight  in  our  heads,  and  then  we  won't  use  'em. 
Good  God !  what  do  you  think  a  university's  for  ?  " 

Esmeer's  idea  came  with  an  effect  of  real  emancipation  25 
to  several  of  us.  We  were  not  going  to  be  afraid  of  ideas 
any  longer,  we  were  going  to  throw  down  every  barrier  of 
prohibition  and  take  them  in  and  see  what  came  of  it.  We 
became  for  a  time  even  intemperately  experimental,  and 
one  of  us,  at  the  bare  suggestion  of  an  eminent  investigator,  30 

1  Dialogue  is  omitted  as  not  being  representative  of  the  writer's 
own  style. 

1-14  :  w.  25-190,  2  :  v,  w. 


190  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

took  hashish  and  very  nearly  died  of  it  within  a  fortnight 
of  our  great  elucidation. 

The  chief  matter  of  our  interchanges  was  of  course  the 
discussion  of  sex.  Once  the  theme  had  been  opened  it  be- 
5  came  a  sore  place  in  our  intercourse ;  none  of  us  seemed  to 
be  able  to  keep  away  from  it.  Our  imaginations  got  astir 
with  it.  We  made  up  for  lost  time  and  went  round  and 
through  it  and  over  it  exhaustively.  I  recall  prolonged  dis- 
cussion of  polygamy  on  the  way  to  Royston,  muddy  No- 

10  vember  tramps  to  Madingley,  when  amidst  much  profanity 
from  Hatherleigh  at  the  serious  treatment  of  so  obsolete  a 
matter,  we  weighed  the  reasons,  if  any,  for  the  institution 
of  marriage.  The  fine  dim  nighttime  spaces  of  the  Great 
Court  are  bound  up  with  the  inconclusive  finales  of  mighty 

15  hot-eared  wrangles;  the  narrows  of  Trinity  Street  and 
Petty  Cury  and  Market  Hill  have  their  particular  associa- 
tions for  me  with  that  spate  of  confession  and  free  speech, 
that  almost  painful  gaol  delivery  of  long-pent  and  crappled 
and  sometimes  crippled  ideas. 

20  And  we  went  on  a  reading  party  that  Easter  to  a  place 
called  Pulborough  in  Sussex,  where  there  is  a  fishing  inn 
and  a  river  that  goes  under  a  bridge.  It  was  a  late  Easter 
and  a  blazing  one,  and  we  boated  and  bathed  and  talked  of 
being  Hellenic  and  the  beauty  of  the  body  until  at  moments 

25  it  seemed  to  us  that  we  were  destined  to  restore  the  Golden 
Age,  by  the  simple  abolition  of  tailors  and  outfitters. 

Those  undergraduate  talks!  how  rich  and  glorious  they 
seemed,  how  splendidly  new  the  ideas  that  grew  and  multi- 
plied in  our  seething  minds !  We  made  long  afternoon  and 

30  evening  raids  over  the  Downs  toward  Arundel,  and  would 
come  tramping  back  through  the  still  keen  moonlight  singing 
and  shouting.  We  formed  romantic  friendships  with  one 
another,  and  grieved  more  or  less  convincingly  that  there 

3-19  :  v,  w,  1.  20-26  :  v,  w.  22-191,  5  :  v. 


H.  G.  WELLS  191 

were  no  splendid  women  fit  to  be  our  companions  in  the 
world.  But  Hatherleigh,  it  seemed,  had  once  known  a 
girl  whose  hair  was  gloriously  red.  "  My  God !  "  said 
Hatherleigh  to  convey  the  quality  of  her;  just  simply  and 
with  projectile  violence  :  "  My  God !  "  5 

Benton  had  heard  of  a  woman  who  had  lived  with  a 
man,  refusing  to  be  married  to  him — we  thought  that 
splendid  beyond  measure, — I  cannot  now  imagine  why.  She 
was  "  like  a  tender  goddess/'  Benton  said.  A  sort  of  shame 
came  upon  us  in  the  dark  in  spite  of  our  liberal  intentions  10 
when  Benton  committed  himself  to  that.  And  after  such 
talk  we  would  fall  upon  great  pauses  of  emotional  dream- 
ing, and  if  by  chance  we  passed  a  girl  in  a  governess  cart, 
or  some  farmer's  daughter  walking  to  the  station,  we  be- 
came alertly  silent  or  obstreperously  indifferent  to  her.  15 
For  might  she  not  be  just  that  one  exception  to  the  banal 
decency,  the  sickly  pointless  conventionality,  the  sham  mod- 
esty of  the  times  in  which  we  lived  ? 

We  felt  we  stood  for  a  new  movement,  not  realizing  how 
perenially  this  same  emancipation  returns  to  those  ancient  20 
courts  beside  the  Cam.  We  were  the  anti-decency  party, 
we  discovered  a  catch  phrase  that  we  flourished  about  in 
the  Union  and  made  our  watchword,  namely  "  stark  fact." 
We  hung  nude  pictures  in  our  rooms  much  as  if  they  had 
been  flags,  to  the  earnest  concern  of  our  bedders,  and  I  25 
disinterred  my  long-kept  engraving  and  had  it  framed  in 
fumed  oak,  and  found  for  it  a  completer  and  less  restrained 
companion,  a  companion  I  never  cared  for  in  the  slightest 
degree.  .  .  . 

This  efflorescence  did  not  prevent,  I  think  indeed  it  rather  30 
helped,  our  more  formal  university  work,  for  most  of  us 
took  our  firsts  and  three  of  us  got  Fellowships  in  one  year 
or  another.    There  was  Benton,  who  had  a  Research  Fel- 
6-18 :  w,  x,  c.  19-29  :  v,  w. 


192  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

lowship  and  went  to  Tubingen,  there  was  Esmeer  and 
myself,  who  both  became  Residential  Fellows.  I  had  taken 
the  Mental  and  Moral  Science  Tripos  (as  it  was  then), 
and  three  years  later  I  got  a  lectureship  in  political  science. 
5  In  those  days  it  was  disguised  in  the  cloak  of  Political 
Economy. 

§2 

It  was  our  affectation  to  be  a  little  detached  from  the 
main  stream  of  undergraduate  life.  We  worked  pretty 
hard,  but  by  virtue  of  our  beer,  our  socialism,  and  such- 

10  like  heterodoxy,  held  ourselves  to  be  differentiated  from 
the  swatting  reading  man.  None  of  us,  except  Baxter, 
who  was  a  rowing  blue,  a  rather  abnormal  blue  with  an 
appetite  for  ideas,  took  games  seriously  enough  to  train, 
and  on  the  other  hand  we  intimated  contempt  for  the  rather 

15  mediocre,  deliberately  humorous,  consciously  gentlemanly 
and  consciously  wild  undergraduate  men  who  made  up  the 
mass  of  Cambridge  life.  After  the  manner  of  youth  we 
were  altogether  too  hard  on  our  contemporaries.  We  bat- 
tered our  caps  and  tore  our  gowns  lest  they  should  seem 

20  new,  and  we  despised  these  others  extremely  for  doing  ex- 
actly the  same  things;  we  had  an  idea  of  ourselves  and 
resented  beyond  measure  a  similar  weakness  in  these  our 
brothers. 

There  was  a  type,  or  at  least  there  seemed  to  us  to  be 

25  a  type — I'm  a  little  doubtful  at  times  now  whether  after 
all  we  didn't  create  it — for  which  Hatherleigh  invented 
the  nickname  the  "  Pinky  Dinkys,"  intending  thereby  both 
contempt  and  abhorrence  in  almost  equal  measure.  The 
Pinky  Dinky  summarized  all  that  we  particularly  did  not 

30  want  to  be,  and  also,  I  now  perceive,  much  that  we  were 
and  all  that  we  secretly  dreaded  becoming. 

S,  6  :  e.  7-23  :  c,  v. 


H.  G.  WELLS  193 

But  it  is  hard  to  convey  the  Pinky  Dinky  idea,  for  all 
that  it  meant  so  much  to  us.  We  spent  one  evening  at  least 
during  that  reading  party  upon  the  Pinky  Dinky;  and  we 
sat  about  our  one  fire  after  a  walk  in  the  rain — it  was  our 
only  wet  day — smoked  our  excessively  virile  pipes,  and  5 
celebrated  the  natural  history  of  the  Pinky  Dinky.  We  im- 
provised a  sort  of  Pinky  Dinky  litany,  and  Hatherleigh 
supplied  deep  notes  for  the  responses. 

"  All  his  little  jokes  and  things,"  said  Esmeer,  regarding 
his  feet  on  the  fender,  "  it's  just  a  nervous  sniggering — be-  10 
cause  he's  afraid.  .   .   .  Oxford's  no  better." 

"  What's  he  afraid  of  ?  "  said  I. 

"  God  knows !  "  exploded  Hatherleigh  and  stared  at  the 
fire. 

"Life!"  said  Esmeer.     "And  so  in  a  way  are  we,"  he  15 
added,  and  made  a  thoughtful  silence  for  a  time. 

"  I  say,"  began  Carter,  who  was  doing  the  Natural  Science 
Tripos,  "  what  is  the  adult  form  of  the  Pinky  Dinky  ?  " 

But  there   we   were  checked  by  our  ignorance   of  the 
world.  20 

"  What  is  the  adult  form  of  any  of  us  ?  "  asked  Benton, 
voicing  the  thought  that  had  arrested  our  flow. 

§3 

I  do  not  remember  that  we  ever  lifted  our  criticism  to 
the  dons  and  the  organization  of  the  University.     I  think 
we  took  them  for  granted.    When  I  look  back  at  my  youth  25 
I  am  always  astonished  by  the  multitude  of  things  that  we 
took  for  granted.     It  seemed  to  us  that  Cambridge  was 
in  the  order  of  things,  for  all  the  world  like  having  eye- 
brows or  a  vermiform  appendix.     Now  with  the  larger 
scepticism  of  middle  age  I  can  entertain  very  fundamental  30 
1-8  :  w.  27-194,  2 :  w. 


194  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

doubts    about    these    old    universities.     Indeed    I    had    a 

scheme 

I  do  not  see  what  harm  I  can  do  now  by  laying  bare  the 
purpose  of  the  political  combinations  I  was  trying  to  effect. 
5  My  educational  scheme  was  indeed  the  starting-point  of 
all  the  big  project  of  conscious  public  reconstruction  at 
which  I  aimed.  I  wanted  to  build  up  a  new  educational 
machine  altogether  for  the  governing  class  out  of  a  consoli- 
dated system  of  special  public  service  schools.  I  meant  to 

10  get  to  work  upon  this,  whatever  office  I  was  given  in  the 
new  government.  I  could  have  begun  my  plan  from  the 
Admiralty  or  the  War  Office  quite  as  easily  as  from  the 
Education  Office.  I  am  firmly  convinced  it  is  hopeless  to 
think  of  reforming  the  old  public  schools  and  universities 

15  to  meet  the  needs  of  a  modern  state,  they  send  their  roots 
too  deep  and  far,  the  cost  would  exceed  any  good  that  could 
possibly  be  effected,  and  so  I  have  sought  a  way  round 
this  invincible  obstacle.  I  do  think  it  would  be  quite  prac- 
ticable to  side-track,  as  the  Americans  say,  the  whole  system 

20  by  creating  hard-working,  hard-living,  modern,  and  scien- 
tific boys'  schools,  first  for  the  Royal  Navy  and  then  for 
the  public  service  generally,  and  as  they  grew,  opening 
them  to  the  public  without  any  absolute  obligation  to  sub- 
sequent service.  Simultaneously  with  this  it  would  not  be 

25  impossible  to  develop  a  new  college  system  with  strong 
faculties  in  modern  philosophy,  modern  history,  European 
literature  and  criticism,  physical  and  biological  science,  edu- 
cation and  sociology. 

We  could  in  fact  create  a  new  liberal  education  in  this 

30  way,  and  cut  the  umbilicus  of  the  classical  languages  for 
good  and  all.  I  should  have  set  this  going,  and  trusted  it 
to  correct  or  kill  the  old  public  schools  and  the  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  tradition  altogether.  I  had  men  in  my  mind  to 

5-28  :  v.  29-195,  16  :  v,x  (cf.  157,  33-159-  IO)- 


H.  G.  WELLS  195 

begin  the  work,  and  I  should  have  found  others.  I  should 
have  aimed  at  making  a  hard-trained,  capable,  intellectually 
active,  proud  type  of  man.  Everything  else  would  have 
been  made  subservient  to  that.  I  should  have  kept  my  grip 
on  the  men  through  their  vacation,  and  somehow  or  other  5 
I  would  have  contrived  a  young  woman  to  match  them. 
I  think  I  could  have  seen  to  it  effectually  enough  that  they 
didn't  get  at  croquet  and  tennis  with  the  vicarage  daughters 
and  discover  sex  in  the  Peeping  Tom  fashion  I  did,  and 
that  they  realized  quite  early  in  life  that  it  isn't  really  virile  10 
to  reek  of  tobacco.  I  should  have  had  military  maneuvers, 
training  ships,  aeroplane  work,  mountaineering,  and  so 
forth,  in  the  place  of  the  solemn  trivialities  of  games,  and 
I  should  have  fed  and  housed  my  men  clean  and  very  hard 
— where  there  wasn't  any  audit  ale,  no  credit  tradesmen,  15 
and  plenty  of  high-pressure  douches.  .  .  . 

I  have  revisited  Cambridge  and  Oxford  time  after  time 
since  I  came  down,  and  so  far  as  the  Empire  goes,  I  want 
to  get  clear  of  those  two  places.  .  .  . 

Always  I  renew  my  old  feelings,  a  physical  oppression,  20 
a  sense  of  lowness  and  dampness  almost  exactly  like  the 
feeling  of  an  underground  room  where  paper  molders  and 
leaves  the  wall,  a  feeling  of  ineradicable  contagion  in  the 
Gothic  buildings,  in  the  narrow  ditch-like  rivers,  in  those 
roads  and  roads  of  stuffy  little  villas.     Those  little  villas  25 
have  destroyed  all  the  good  of  the  old  monastic  system  and 
none  of  its  evil.  .   .   . 

Some  of  the  most  charming  people  in  the  world  live  in 
them,  but  their  collective  effect  is  below  the  quality  of  any 
individual  among  them.  Cambridge  is  a  world  of  subdued  30 
tones,  of  excessively  subtle  humors,  of  prim  conduct  and 
free  thinking;  it  fears  the  Parent,  but  it  has  no  fear  of 
God;  it  offers  amidst  surroundings  that  vary  between  dis- 

6-1 1  :  w.  17-19  :  b.  20-27  :  a.  30-196,  8  :  w,  c. 


196  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

guises  and  antiquarian  charm  the  inflammation  of  litera- 
ture's purple  draught ;  one  hears  there  a  peculiar  thin 
scandal  like  no  other  scandal  in  the  world — a  covetous  scan- 
dal— so  that  I  am  always  reminded  of  Ibsen  in  Cambridge. 
5  In  Cambridge  and  the  plays  of  Ibsen  alone  does  it  seem 
appropriate  for  the  heroine  before  the  crisis  of  life  to 
"  enter,  take  off  her  overshoes,  and  put  her  wet  umbrella 
upon  the  writing  desk."  .  .  . 

We  have  to  make  a  new  Academic  mind  for  modern 

10  needs,  and  the  last  thing  to  make  it  out  of,  I  am  convinced, 
is  the  old  Academic  mind.  One  might  as  soon  try  to  fake 
the  old  Victory  at  Portsmouth  into  a  line  of  battle  ship 
again.  Besides  which  the  old  Academic  mind,  like  those  old 
bathless,  damp  Gothic  colleges,  is  much  too  delightful  in  its 

15  peculiar  and  distinctive  way  to  damage  by  futile  patching. 
My  heart  warms  to  a  sense  of  affectionate  absurdity  as 
I   recall  dear  old  Codger,  surely  the  most  "  unleaderly " 
of  men.     No  more  than  from  the  old  Schoolmen,  his  kin- 
dred, could  one  get  from  him  a  School  for  Princes.     Yet 

20  apart  from  his  teaching  he  was  as  curious  and  adorable  as 
a  good  Netsuke.  Until  quite  recently  he  was  a  power  in 
Cambridge,  he  could  make  and  bar  and  destroy,  and  in  a 
way  he  has  become  the  quintessence  of  Cambridge  in  my 
thoughts. 

25  I  see  him  on  his  way  to  the  morning's  lecture,  with  his 
plump  childish  face,  his  round  innocent  eyes,  his  absurdly 
non-prehensile  fat  hand  carrying  his  cap,  his  gray  trousers 
braced  up  much  too  high,  his  feet  a  trifle  inturned,  and 
going  across  the  great  court  with  a  queer  tripping  pace 

30  that  seemed  cultivated  even  to  my  na'ive  undergraduate  eye. 
Or  I  see  him  lecturing.  He  talked  in  a  fluting  rapid  voice, 
and  with  the  utmost  lucidity.  His  mind  and  voice  had 
precisely  the  fluid  quality  of  some  clear  subtle  liquid;  one 

25-197.  6:a}w,h  (cf.  103,  31-104,  25)- 


H.  G.  WELLS  197 

felt  it  could  flow  round  anything  and  overcome  nothing. 
And  its  nimble  eddies  were  wonderful!  Or  again  I  recall 
him  drinking  port  with  little  muscular  movements  in  his 
neck  and  cheek  and  chin  and  his  brows  knit — very  judicial, 
very  concentrated,  preparing  to  say  the  apt  just  thing;  it  5 
was  the  last  thing  he  would  have  told  a  lie  about. 

When  I  think  of  Codger  I  am  reminded  of  an  inscription 
I  saw  on  some  occasion  in  Regent's  Park  above  two  eyes 
scarcely  more  limpidly  innocent  than  his — "  Born  in  the 
Menagerie."  Never  once  since  Codger  began  to  display  10 
the  early  promise  of  scholarship  at  the  age  of  eight  or 
more  had  he  been  outside  the  bars.  His  utmost  travel  had 
been  to  lecture  here  and  lecture  there.  His  student  phase 
had  culminated  in  papers  of  quite  exceptional  brilliance, 
and  he  had  gone  on  to  lecture  with  a  cheerful  combination  15 
of  wit  and  mannerism  that  had  made  him  a  success  from 
the  beginning.  He  has  lectured  ever  since.  He  lectures 
still.  Year  by  year  he  has  become  plumper,  more  rubicund, 
and  more  and  more  of  an  item  for  the  intelligent  visitor  to 
see.  Even  in  my  time  he  was  pointed  out  to  people  as  20 
part  of  our  innumerable  enrichments,  and  obviously  he 
knew  it.  He  has  become  now  almost  the  leading  Character 
in  a  little  donnish  world  of  much  too  intensely  appreciated 
Characters. 

He  boasted  he  took  no  exercise,  and  also  of  his  knowl-  25 
edge  of  port  wine.     Of  other  wines  he  confessed   quite 
frankly  he  had  no  "  special  knowledge."     Beyond   these 
things  he  had  little  pride  except  that  he  claimed  to  have 
read  every  novel  by  a  woman  writer  that  had  ever  entered 
the  Union  Library.    This,  however,  he  held  to  be  remarka-  30 
ble  rather  than  ennobling,  and  such  boasts  as  he  made  of 
it    were    tinged    with    playfulness.     Certainly    he    had    a 
scholar's  knowledge  of  the  works  of  Miss  Marie  Corelli, 

7-24  :  w,  n.  25-32  :  w,  1. 


198  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

Miss  Braddon,  Miss  Elizabeth  Glyn,  and  Madame  Sarah 
Grand  that  would  have  astonished  and  flattered  those  ladies 
enormously,  and  he  loved  nothing  so  much  in  his  hours  of 
relaxation  as  to  propound  and  answer  difficult  questions 
5  upon  their  books.  Tusher  of  King's  was  his  ineffectual 
rival  in  this  field,  their  bouts  were  memorable  and  rarely 
other  than  glorious  for  Codger;  but  then  Tusher  spread 
himself  too  much,  he  also  undertook  to  rehearse  whole 
pages  out  of  Bradshaw,  and  tell  you  with  all  the  changes 

10  how  to  get  from  any  station  to  any  station  in  Great  Britain 
by  the  nearest  and  cheapest  routes.  .  .  . 

Codger  lodged  with  a  little  deaf  innocent  old  lady,  Mrs. 
Araminta  Mergle,  who  was  understood  to  be  herself  a 
very  redoubtable  Character  in  the  Gyp-Bedder  class ;  about 

15  her  he  related  quietly  absurd  anecdotes.  He  displayed  a 
marvelous  invention  in  ascribing  to  her  plausible  expressions 
of  opinion  entirely  identical  in  import  with  those  of  the 
Oxford  and  Harvard  Pragmatists,  against  whom  he  waged 
a  fierce  obscure  war.  .  .  . 

20  It  was  Codger's  function  to  teach  me  philosophy,  philoso- 
phy !  the  intimate  wisdom  of  things.  He  dealt  in  a  variety 
of  Hegelian  stuff  like  nothing  else  in  the  world,  but  mar- 
velously  consistent  with  itself.  It  was  a  wonderful  web 
he  spun  out  of  that  big  active  childish  brain  that  had  never 

25  lusted  nor  hated  nor  grieved  nor  feared  nor  passionately 
loved, — a  web  of  iridescent  threads.  He  had  luminous 
final  theories  about  Love  and  Death  and  Immortality,  odd 
matters  they  seemed  for  him  to  think  about!  and  all  his' 
woven  thoughts  lay  across  my  perceptions  of  the  realities 

30  of  things,  as  flimsy  and  irrelevant  and  clever  and  beautiful, 
oh! — as  a  dew-wet  spider's  web  slung  in  the  morning  sun- 
shine across  the  black  mouth  of  a  gun.  .  .  . 

12-19  :  w.  20-32  :  e,  n,  h. 


H.  G.  WELLS  199 

§4 

All  through  these  years  of  development  I  perceived  now 
there  must  have  been  growing  in  me,  slowly,  irregularly,  as- 
similating to  itself  all  the  phrases  and  forms  of  patriotism, 
diverting  my  religious  impulses,  utilizing  my  aesthetic  tend- 
encies, my  dominating  idea,  the  statesman's  idea,  that  idea  5 
of  social  service  which  is  the  real  protagonist  of  my  story, 
that  real  though  complex  passion  for  Making,  making 
widely  and  greatly,  cities,  national  order,  civilization,  whose 
interplay  with  all  those  other  factors  in  life  I  have  set  out 
to  present.  It  was  growing  in  me — as  one's  bones  grow,  10 
no  man  intending  it. 

I  have  tried  to  show  how,  quite  early  in  my  life,  the 
fact  of  disorderliness,  the  conception  of  social  life  as  being 
a  multitudinous  confusion  out  of  hand,  came  to  me.  One 
always  of  course  simplifies  these  things  in  the  telling,  but  15 
I  do  not  think  I  ever  saw  the  world  at  large  in  any  other 
terms.  I  never  at  any  stage  entertained  the  idea  which 
sustained  my  mother,  and  which  sustains  so  many  people 
in  the  world, — the  idea  that  the  universe,  whatever  super- 
ficial discords  it  may  present,  is  as  a  matter  of  fact  "  all  20 
right,"  is  being  steered  to  definite  ends  by  a  serene  and 
unquestionable  God.  My  mother  thought  that  Order  pre- 
vailed, and  that  disorder  was  just  incidental  and  fore- 
doomed rebellion;  I  feel  and  have  always  felt  that  order 
rebels  against  and  struggles  against  disorder,  that  order  25 
has  an  uphill  job,  in  gardens,  experiments,  suburbs,  every- 
thing alike;  from  the  beginning  of  my  experience  I  dis- 
covered hostility  to  order,  a  constant  escaping  from  control. 

The  current  of  living  and  contemporary  ideas  in  which 
my  mind  was  presently  swimming  made  all  in  the  same  30 
direction;  in  place  of  my  mother's  attentive,   meticulous 

i-n  :  c,  x.  12-28  :  v.  29-200,  3  :  w. 


2OO  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

but  occasionally  extremely  irascible  Providence,   the  talk 

was  all  of  the  Struggle  for  Existence  and  the  survival  not 

of  the  Best — that  was  nonsense,  but  of  the  fittest  to  survive. 

The  attempts  to  rehabilitate  Faith  in  the  form  of  the  In- 

5  dividualist's  laissez  faire  never  won  upon  me.     I  disliked 

Herbert  Spencer  all  my  life  until  I  read  his  autobiography, 

and  then  I  laughed  a  little  and  loved  him.     I  remember  as 

early  as  the  City  Merchants'  days  how  Britten  and  I  scoffed 

at  that  pompous  question-begging  word  "  Evolution,"  hav- 

10  ing,  so  to  speak,  found  it  out.  Evolution,  some  illuminating 
talker  had  remarked  at  the  Britten  lunch  table,  had  led 
not  only  to  man,  but  to  the  liver-fluke  and  skunk,  obvi- 
ously it  might  lead  anywhere ;  order  came  into  things 
only  through  the  struggling  mind  of  man.  That  lit  things 

15  wonderfully  for  us.  When  I  went  up  to  Cambridge  I  was 
perfectly  clear  that  life  was  a  various  and  splendid  dis- 
order of  forces  that  the  spirit  of  man  sets  itself  to  tame. 
I  have  never  since  fallen  away  from  that  persuasion. 

4-18:  w,  n.  18  :b. 
i,  6,  8,  ii,   12,  14. 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON 
1874- 

TOLSTOY  AND  THE  CULT  OF  SIMPLICITY 
From  "Varied  Types"1 

THE  whole  world  is  certainly  heading  for  a  great  sim- 
plicity, not  deliberately,  but  rather  inevitably.  It  is  not 
a  mere  fashion  of  false  innocence,  like  that  of  the  French 
aristocrats  before  the  Revolution,  who  built  an  altar  to 
Pan,  and  who  taxed  the  peasantry  for  the  enormous  ex-  5 
penditure  which  is  needed  in  order  to  live  the  simple  life 
of  peasants.  The  simplicity  toward  which  the  world  is 
driving  is  the  necessany  outcome  of  all  our  systems  and 
speculations  and  of  our  deep  and  continuous  contemplation 
of  things.  For  the  universe  is  like  everything  in  it;  we  ic 
have  to  look  at  it  repeatedly  and  habitually  before  we  see 
it.  It  is  only  when  we  have  seen  it  for  the  hundredth  time 
that  we  see  it  for  the  first  time.  The  more  consistently 
things  are  contemplated,  the  more  they  tend  to  unify  them- 
selves and  therefore  to  simplify  themselves.  The  simplifica-  15 
tion  of  anything  is  always  sensational.  Thus  monotheism 
is  the  most  sensational  of  things:  it  is  as  if  we  gazed  long 
at  a  design  full  of  disconnected  objects,  and,  suddenly, 
with  a  stunning  thrill,  they  came  together  into  a  huge  and 
staring  face.  20 

Few  people  will  dispute  that  all  the  typical  movements 
of  our  time  are  upon  this  road  towards  simplification.    Each 
*  By  permission  of  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company. 
10-20  :  v,  x. 

201 


2O2  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

system  seeks  to  be  more  fundamental  than  the  other;  each 
seeks,  in  the  literal  sense,  to  undermine  the  other.  In  art, 
for  example,  the  old  conception  of  man,  classic  as  the 
Apollo  Belvidere,  has  first  been  attacked  by  the  realist, 
5  who  asserts  that  man,  as  a  fact  of  natural  history,  is  a 
creature  with  colorless  hair  and  a  freckled  face.  Then 
comes  the  Impressionist,  going  yet  deeper,  who  asserts  that 
to  his  physical  eye,  which  alone  is  certain,  man  is  .a  crea- 
ture with  purple  hair  and  a  gray  face.  Then  comes  the 

10  Symbolist,  and  says  that  to  his  soul,  which  alone  is  cer- 
tain, man  is  a  creature  with  green  hair  and  a  blue  face. 
And  all  the  great  writers  of  our  time  represent  in  one 
form  or  another  this  attempt  to  re-establish  communication 
with  the  elemental,  or,  as  it  is  sometimes  more  roughly 

15  and  fallaciously  expressed,  to  return  to  nature.  Some  think 
that  the  return  to  nature  consists  in  drinking  no  wine; 
some  think  that  it  consists  in  drinking  a  great  deal  more 
than  is  good  for  them.  Some  think  that  the  return  to 
nature  is  achieved  by  beating  swords  into  plowshares; 

20  some  think  it  is  achieved  by  turning  plowshares  into  very 
ineffectual  British  War  Office  bayonets.  It  is  natural, 
according  to  the  Jingo,  for  a  man  to  kill  other  people  with 
gunpowder  and  himself  with  gin.  It  is  natural,  according 
to  the  humanitarian  revolutionist,  to  kill  other  people  with 

25  dynamite  and  himself  with  vegetarianism.  It  would  be 
too  obviously  Philistine  a  sentiment,  perhaps,  to  suggest 
that  the  claim  of  either  of  these  persons  to  be  obeying 
the  voice  of  nature  is  interesting  when  we  consider  that  they 
require  huge  volumes  of  paradoxical  argument  to  persuade 

30  themselves  or  anyone  else  of  the  truth  of  their  conclusions. 
But  the  giants  of  our  time  are  undoubtedly  alike  in  that 
they  approach  by  very  different  roads  this  conception  of 
the  return  to  simplicity.  Ibsen  returns  to  nature  by  the 

2-15  :c,w,h  (cf.  128,  1-30).  15-30  :w,h,c  (cf.  128.  2-30).  31-203.  4  :  c,  n. 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  203 

angular  exterior  of  fact,  Maeterlinck  by  the  eternal  tend- 
encies of  fable.  Whitman  returns  to  nature  by  seeing  how 
much  he  can  accept,  Tolstoy  by  seeing  how  much  he  can 
reject. 

Now,  this  heroic  desire  to  return  to  nature  is,  of  course,  5 
in  some  respects,  rather  like  the  heroic  desire  of  a  kitten 
to  return  to  its  own  tail.     A  tail  is  a  simple  and  beautiful 
object,  rhythmic  in  curve  and  soothing  in  texture;  but  it 
is  certainly  one  of  the  minor  but  characteristic  qualities  of 
a  tail  that  it  should  hang  behind.    It  is  impossible  to  deny  10 
that  it  would  in  some  degree  lose  its  character  if  attached 
to  any  other  part  of  the  anatomy.     Now,  nature  is  like  a 
tail  in  the  sense  that  it  is  vitally  important,  if  it  is  to  dis- 
charge its  real  duty,  that  it  should  be  always  behind.     To 
imagine  that  we  can  see  nature,  especially  our  own  nature,  15 
face  to  face,  is  a  folly;  it  is  even  a  blasphemy.     It  is  like 
the  conduct  of  a  cat  in  some  mad  fairy-tale,  who  should  set 
out  on  his  travels  with  the  firm  conviction  that  he  would 
find  his  tail  growing  like  a  tree  in  the  meadows  at  the  end 
of  the  world.     And  the  actual  effect  of  the  travels  of  the  20 
philosopher  in  search  of  nature,  when  seen  from  the  out- 
side,  looks   very  like   the   gyrations   of   the   tail-pursuing 
kitten,  exhibiting  much  enthusiasm,  but  little  dignity,  much 
cry  and  very  little  tail.     The  grandeur  of  nature  is  that 
she  is  omnipotent  and  unseen,  that  she  is  perhaps  ruling  25 
us  most  when  we  think  that  she  is  heeding  us  least.    "  Thou 
art  a  God  that  hidest  Thyself,"  said  the  Hebrew  poet.     It 
may  be  said  with  all  reverence  that  it  is  behind  a  man's 
back  that  the  spirit  of  nature  hides. 

It  is  this  consideration  that  lends  a  certain  air  of  futility  30 
even  to  all  the  inspired  simplicities  and  thunderous  veraci- 
ties of  Tolstoy.    We  feel  that  a  man  cannot  make  himself 
simple  merely  by  warring  on  complexity;  we  feel,  indeed, 

201,  21-203,  4  :  v-  5~X4  :  w>  a>  x-  l6~29  :  w,  c,  n.  30-204,  7  :  v. 


204  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

in  our  saner  moments,  that  a  man  cannot  make  himself 
simple  at  all.  A  self-conscious  simplicity  may  well  be  far 
more  intrinsically  ornate  than  luxury  itself.  Indeed,  a  great 
deal  of  the  pomp  and  sumptuousness  of  the  world's  history 
5  was  simple  in  the  truest  sense.  It  was  born  of  an  almost 
babyish  receptiveness ;  and  it  was  the  work  of  men  who 
had  eyes  to  wonder  and  men  who  had  ears  to  hear. 

"  King  Solomon  brought  merchant  men 

Because  of  his  desire 

10  With  peacocks,  apes,  and  ivory, 

From  Tarshish  unto  Tyre." 

But  this  proceeding  was  not  a  part  of  the  wisdom  of  Solo- 
mon; it  was  a  part  of  his  folly — I  had  almost  said  of  his 
innocence.  Tolstoy,  we  feel,  would  not  be  content  with  hurl- 

15  ing  satire  and  denunciation  at  "  Solomon  in  all  his  glory." 
With  fierce  and  unimpeachable  logic  he  would  go  a  step 
further.  He  would  spend  days  and  nights  in  the  meadows 
stripping  the  shameless  crimson  coronals  off  the  lilies  of 
the  field. 

20  The  new  collection  of  "  Tales  from  Tolstoy,"  translated 
and  edited  by  Mr.  R.  Nisbet  Bain,  is  calculated  to  draw 
particular  attention  to  this  ethical  and  ascetic  side  of 
Tolstoy's  work.  In  one  sense,  and  that  the  deepest  sense, 
the  work  of  Tolstoy  is,  of  course,  a  genuine  and  noble 

25  appeal  to  simplicity.  The  narrow  notion  that  an  artist  may 
not  teach  is  pretty  well  exploded  by  now.  But  the  truth  of 
the  matter  is,  that  an  artist  teaches  far  more  by  his  mere 
background  and  properties,  his  landscape,  his  costume,  his 
idiom  and  technique — all  the  part  of  his  work,  in  short, 

30  of  which  he  is  probably  entirely  unconscious,  than  by  the 
elaborate  and  pompous  moral  dicta  which  he  fondly  im- 
agines to  be  his  opinions.  The  real  distinction  between  the 

25-205, 8 :  o. 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  205 

ethics  of  high  art  and  the  ethics  of  manufactured  and 
didactic  art  lies  in  the  simple  fact  that  the  bad  fable  has 
a  moral,  while  the  good  fable  is  a  moral.  And  the  real 
moral  of  Tolstoy  comes  out  constantly  in  these  stories, 
the  great  moral  which  lies  at  the  heart  of  all  his  5 
work,  of  which  he  is  probably  unconscious,  and  of 
which  it  is  quite  likely  that  he  would  vehemently  dis- 
approve. The  curious  cold  white  light  of  morning  that 
shines  over  all  the  tales,  the  folklore  simplicity  with  which 
"  a  man  or  a  woman  "  are  spoken  of  without  further  identifi-  10 
cation,  the  love — one  might  almost  say  the  lust — for  the 
qualities  of  brute  materials,  the  hardness  of  wood,  and  the 
softness  of  mud,  the  ingrained  belief  in  a  certain  ancient 
kindliness  sitting  beside  the  very  cradle  of  the  race  of  man 
— these  influences  are  truly  moral.  When  we  put  beside  15 
them  the  trumpeting  and  tearing  nonsense  of  the  didactic 
Tolstoy,  screaming  for  an  obscene  purity,  shouting  for  an 
inhuman  peace,  hacking  up  human  life  into  small  sins  with 
a  chopper,  sneering  at  men,  women,  and  children  out  of 
respect  to  humanity,  combining  in  one  chaos  of  contradic-  20 
tions  an  unmanly  Puritan  and  an  uncivilized  prig,  then, 
indeed,  we  scarcely  know  whither  Tolstoy  has  vanished. 
We  know  not  what  to  do  with  this  small  and  noisy  moralist 
who  is  inhabiting  one  corner  of  a  great  and  good  man. 

It  is  difficult  in  every  case  to  reconcile  Tolstoy  the  great  25 
artist  with  Tolstoy  the  almost  venomous  reformer.     It  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  a  man  who  draws  in  such  noble 
outlines  the  dignity  of  the  daily  life  of  humanity  regards 
as  evil  that  divine  act  of  procreation  by  which  that  dignity 
is  renewed  from  age  to  age.    It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  a  30 
man  who  has  painted  with   so   frightful  an  honesty  the 
heartrending  emptiness  of  the  life  of  the  poor  can  really 
grudge  them  every  one  of  their  pitiful   pleasures,   from 

8-24  :  m,  1,  e,  c,  x  (cf.  145,  18-146,  i?).  25-206,  9  :  c,  h. 


206  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

courtship  to  tobacco.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  a  poet 
in  prose  who  has  so  powerfully  exhibited  the  earth-born 
air  of  man,  the  essential  kinship  of  a  human  being,  with 
the  landscape  in  which  he  lives,  can  deny  so  elemental  a 

5  virtue  as  that  which  attaches  a  man  to  his  own  ancestors 
and  his  own  land.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  the  man 
who  feels  so  poignantly  the  detestable  insolence  of  oppres- 
sion would  not  actually,  if  he  had  the  chance,  lay  the  op- 
pressor flat  with  his  fist.  All,  however,  arises  from  the 

10  search  after  a  false  simplicity,  the  aim  of  being,  if  I  may  so 
express  it,  more  natural  than  it  is  natural  to  be.  It  would 
not  only  be  more  human,  it  would  be  more  humble  of  us 
to  be  content  to  be  more  complex.  The  truest  kinship  with 
humanity  would  lie  in  doing  as  humanity  has  always  done, 

15  accepting  with  a  sportsmanlike  relish  the  estate  to  which 
we  are  called,  the  star  of  our  happiness,  and  the  fortunes 
of  our  land  and  birth. 

The  work  of  Tolstoy  has  another  and  more  special  sig- 
nificance.   It  represents  the  reassertion  of  a  certain  awful 

20  common  sense  which  characterized  the  most  extreme  utter- 
ances of  Christ.  It  is  true  that  we  cannot  turn  our  cheek 
to  the  smiter;  it  is  true  that  we  cannot  give  our  cloak  to 
the  robber ;  civilization  is  too  complicated,  too  vain-glorious, 
too  emotional.  The  robber  would  brag,  and  we  should 

25  blush ;  in  other  words,  the  robber  and  we  are  alike  senti- 
mentalists. The  command  of  Christ  is  impossible,  but  it 
is  not  insane;  it  is  rather  sanity  preached  to  a  planet  of 
lunatics.  If  the  whole  world  was  suddenly  stricken  with 
a  sense  of  humor  it  would  find  itself  mechanically  fulfilling 

30  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  It  is  not  the  plain  facts  of 
the  world  which  stand  in  the  way  of  that  consummation, 
but  its  passions  of  vanity  and  self-advertisement  and  morbid 
sensibility.  It  is  true  that  we  cannot  turn  the  cheek  to  the 

13-17:!.  i8:b.  18-26  :  c.  18-207,  25  :  k,  v. 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  207 

smiter,  and  the  sole  and  sufficient  reason  is  that  we  have 
not  the  pluck.  Tolstoy  and  his  followers  have  shown  that 
they  have  the  pluck,  and  even  if  we  think  they  are  mis- 
taken, by  this  sign  they  conquer.  Their  theory  has  the 
strength  of  an  utterly  consistent  thing.  It  represents  that  5 
doctrine  of  mildness  and  non-resistance  which  is  the  last 
and  most  audacious  of  all  the  forms  of  resistance  to  every 
existing  authority.  It  is  the  great  strike  of  the  Quakers 
which  is  more  formidable  than  many  sanguinary  revolu- 
tions. If  human  beings  could  only  succeed  in  achieving  10 
a  real  passive  resistance  they  would  be  strong  with  the 
appalling  strength  of  inanimate  things,  they  would  be  calm 
with  the  maddening  calm  of  oak  and  iron,  which  conquer 
without  vengeance  and  are  conquered  without  humiliation. 
The  theory  of  Christian  duty  enunciated  by  them  is  that  15 
we  'should  never  conquer  by  force,  but  always,  if  we  can, 
conquer  by  persuasion.  In  their  mythology  St.  George  did 
not  conquer  the  dragon;  he  tied  a  pink  ribbon  round  its 
neck  and  gave  it  a  saucer  of  milk.  According  to  them,  a 
course  of  consistent  kindness  to  Nero  would  have  turned  20 
him  into  something  only  faintly  representing  Alfred  the 
Great.  In  fact,  the  policy  recommended  by  this  school  for 
dealing  with  the  bovine  stupidity  and  bovine  fury  of  this 
world  is  accurately  summed  up  in  the  celebrated  verse  of 
Mr.  Edward  Lear:  25 

"  There  was  an  old  man  who  said,  '  How 
Shall  I  flee  from  this  terrible  cow? 
I  will  sit  on  a  stile  and  continue  to  smile 
Till  I  soften  the  heart  of  this  cow.'  " 

Their  confidence  in  human  nature  is   really  honorable  30 
and  magnificent;  it  takes  the  form  of  refusing  to  believe 
the  overwhelming  majority  of  mankind,  even  when  they 
set  out  to  explain  their  own  motives.     But  although  most 

4-14  :  c.  15-29  :  c,  w.  30-208,  9  :  k,  f,  x. 


2o8  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

of  us  would  in  all  probability  tend  at  first  sight  to  consider 
this  new  sect  of  Christians  as  little  less  outrageous  than 
some  brawling  and  absurd  sect  in  the  Reformation,  yet 
we  should  fall  into  a  singular  error  in  doing  so.  The  Chris- 
5  tianity  of  Tolstoy  is,  when  we  come  to  consider  it,  one 
of  the  most  thrilling  and  dramatic  incidents  in  our  modern 
civilization.  It  represents  a  tribute  to  the  Christian  re- 
ligion more  sensational  than  the  breaking  of  seals  or  the 
falling  of  stars. 

10  From  the  point  of  view  of  a  rationalist,  the  whole  world 
is  rendered  almost  irrational  by  the  single  phenomenon 
of  Christian  Socialism.  It  turns  the  scientific  universe 
topsy-turvy,  and  makes  it  essentially  possible  that  the  key 
of  all  social  evolution  may  be  found  in  the  dusty  casket  of 

15  some  discredited  creed.  It  cannot  be  amiss  to  consider 
this  phenomenon  as  it  really  is. 

The  religion  of  Christ  has,  like  so  many  true  things, 
been  disproved  an  extraordinary  number  of  times.  It  was 
disproved  by  the  Neo-Platonist  philosophers  at  the  very 

20  moment  when  it  was  first  starting  forth  upon  its  startling 
and  universal  career.  It  was  disproved  again  by  many  of 
the  skeptics  of  the  Renaissance  only  a  few  years  before  its 
second  and  supremely  striking  embodiment,  the  religion 
of  Puritanism,  was  about  to  triumph  over  many  kings  and 

25  civilize  many  continents.  We  all  agree  that  these  schools 
of  negation  were  only  interludes  in  its  history;  but  we  all 
believe  naturally  and  inevitably  that  the  negation  of  our 
own  day  is  really  a  breaking  up  of  the  theological  cosmos, 
an  Armageddon,  a  Ragnarok,  a  twilight  of  the  gods.  The 

30  man  of  the  nineteenth  century,  like  a  schoolboy  of  sixteen, 

believes  that  his  doubt  and  depression  are  symbols  of  the 

end  of  the  world.     In  our  day  the  great  irreligionists  who 

did  nothing  but  dethrone  God  and  drive  angels  before  them 

io-i6:e,  h,  t.  17-29:0,  x. 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  209 

have  been  outstripped,  distanced,  and  made  to  look  orthodox 
and  humdrum.  A  newer  race  of  skeptics  has  found  some- 
thing infinitely  more  exciting  to  do  than  nailing  down  the 
lids  upon  a  million  coffins,  and  the  body  upon  a  single 
cross.  They  have  disputed  not  only  the  elementary  creeds,  5 
but  the  elementary  laws  of  mankind,  property,  patriotism, 
civil  obedience.  They  have  arraigned  civilization  as  openly 
as  the  materialists  have  arraigned  theology;  they  have 
damned  all  the  philosophers  even  lower  than  they  have 
damned  the  saints.  Thousands  of  modern  men  move  10 
quietly  and  conventionally  among  their  fellows  while  hold- 
ing views  of  national  limitation  or  landed  property  that 
would  have  made  Voltaire  shudder  like  a  nun  listening  to 
blasphemies.  And  the  last  and  wildest  phase  of  this 
saturnalia  of  skepticism,  the  school  that  goes  furthest  15 
among  thousands  who  go  so  far,  the  school  that  denies  the 
moral  validity  of  those  ideals  of  courage  or  obedience 
which  are  recognized  even  among  pirates,  this  school  bases 
itself  upon  the  literal  words  of  Christ,  like  Dr.  Watts  or 
Messrs.  Moody  and  Sankey.  Never  in  the  whole  history  20 
of  the  world  was  such  a  tremendous  tribute  paid  to  the 
vitality  of  an  ancient  creed.  Compared  with  this,  it  would 
be  a  small  thing  if  the  Red  Sea  were  cloven  asunder,  or 
the  sun  did  stand  at  midday.  We  are  faced  with  the 
phenomenon  that  a  set  of  revolutionists  whose  contempt  25 
for  all  the  ideals  of  family  and  nation  would  evoke  horror 
in  a  thieves'  kitchen,  who  can  rid  themselves  of  those  ele- 
mentary instincts  of  the  man  and  the  gentleman  which 
cling  to  the  very  bones  of  our  civilization,  cannot  rid  them- 
selves of  the  influence  of  two  or  three  remote  Oriental  30 
anecdotes  written  in  corrupt  Greek.  The  fact,  when  real- 
ized, has  about  it  something  stunning  and  hypnotic.  The 
most  convinced  rationalist  is  in  its  presence  suddenly 
2-20  :c,e,h  (cf.  94,  7-95,  3).  14-20  :  b.  24-31 :  b.  31,  32  :  b.  32-210,  6 :  b. 


2io  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

stricken  with  a  strange  and  ancient  vision,  sees  the  immense 
skeptical  cosmogonies  of  this  age  as  dreams  going  the  way 
of  a  thousand  forgotten  heresies,  and  believes  for  a  moment 
that  the  dark  sayings  handed  down  through  eighteen  cen- 
5  turies  may,  indeed,  contain  in  themselves  the  revolutions 
of  which  we  have  only  begun  to  dream. 

This  value  which  we  have  above  suggested  unquestion- 
ably belongs  to  the  Tolstoians,  who  may  roughly  be  de- 
scribed as  the  new  Quakers.  With  their  strange  optimism, 

10  and  their  most  appalling  logical  courage,  they  offer  a  tribute 
to  Christianity  which  no  orthodoxies  could  offer.  It  cannot 
but  be  remarkable  to  watch  a  revolution  in  which  both  the 
rulers  and  the  rebels  march  under  the  same  symbol.  But 
the  actual  theory  of  non-resistance  itself,  with  all  its  kindred 

15  theories,  is  not,  I  think,  characterized  by  that  intellectual 
obviousness  and  necessity  which  its  supporters  claim  for 
it.  A  pamphlet  before  us  shows  us  an  extraordinary  num- 
ber of  statements  about  the  New  Testament,  of  which  the 
accuracy  is  by  no  means  so  striking  as  the  confidence.  To 

20  begin  with,  we  must  protest  against  a  habit  of  quoting  and 
paraphrasing  at  the  same  time.  When  a  man  is  discussing 
what  Jesus  meant,  let  him  state  first  of  all  what  Pie  said, 
not  what  the  man  thinks  He  would  have  said  if  He  had 
expressed  Himself  more  clearly.  Here  is  an  instance  of 

25  question  and  answer : 

Q.  "  How  did  our  Master  Himself  sum  up  the  law  in  a 
few  words  ?  " 

A.  "  Be  ye  merciful,  be  ye  perfect,  even  as  your  Father ; 
your  Father  in  the  spirit  world  is  merciful,  is  perfect." 

30      There  is  nothing  in  this,  perhaps,  which  Christ  might  not 
have  said  except  the  abominable  modernism  of  "  the  spirit 
world  " ;  but  to  say  that  it  is  recorded  that  He  did  say  it, 
209,  24-210,  6  :  h,  n.  208,  17-210,  6 :  v,  u,  f.  7-25  :  d  (cf.  208*  7-210,  6). 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  211 

is  like  saying  it  is  recorded  that  He  preferred  palm  trees 
to  sycamores.     It  is  a  simple  and  unadulterated  untruth. 
The  author  should  know  that  these  words  have  meant  a 
thousand  things  to  a  thousand  people,  and  that  if  more 
ancient  sects  had  paraphrased  them  as  cheerfully  as  he,  he  5 
would  never  have  had  the  texts  upon  which  he  founds  his 
theory.    In  a  pamphlet  in  which  plain  printed  words  cannot 
be  left  alone,  it  is  not  surprising  if  there  are  mis-statements 
upon   larger   matters.      Here   is   a   statement   clearly   and 
philosophically  laid  down  which  we  can  only  content  our-  10 
selves  with  flatly  denying :  "  The  fifth  rule  of  our  Lord 
is  that  we  should  take  special  pains  to  cultivate  the  same 
kind  of  regard  for  people  of  foreign  countries,  and   for 
those  generally  who  do  not  belong  to  us,  or  even  have  an 
antipathy  to  us,  which  we  already  entertain  towards  our  15 
own  people,  and  those  who  are  in  sympathy  with  us."     I 
should  very  much  like  to  know  where  in  the  whole  of  the 
New  Testament  the  author  finds  this  violent,  unnatural, 
and  immoral  proposition.     Christ  did  not  have  the  same 
kind  of  regard  for  one  person  as  for  another.     We  are  20 
specifically  told  that  there  were  certain  persons  whom  He 
specially  loved.     It  is  most  improbable  that  He  thought  of 
other  nations  as  He  thought  of  His  own.     The  sight  of 
His   national  city  moved   Him  to  tears,  and   the  highest 
compliment  He  paid  was,  "  Behold  an  Israelite  indeed."  25 
The  author  has  simply  confused  two  entirely  distinct  things. 
Christ  commanded  us  to  have  love  for  all  men,  but  even  if 
we  had  equal  love  for  all  men,  to  speak  of  having  the  same 
love  for  all  men  is  merely  bewildering  nonsense.     If  we 
love  a  man  at  all,  the  impression  he  produces  on  us  must  30 
be  vitally  different  to  the  impression  produced  by  another 
man  whom  we  love.     To  speak  of  having  the  same  kind 
of  regard  for  both  is  about  as  sensible  as  asking  a  man 

2:b.  3-9:  o.  19-26:  b. 


212  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

whether  he  prefers  chrysanthemums  or  billiards.  Christ 
did  not  love  humanity ;  He  never  said  He  loved  Humanity ; 
He  loved  men.  Neither  He  nor  anyone  else  can  love  hu- 
manity :  it  is  like  loving  a  giant  centipede.  And  the  reason 
5  that  the  Tolstoians  can  even  endure  to  think  of  an  equally 
distributed  affection  is  that  their  love  of  humanity  is  a 
logical  love,  a  love  into  which  they  are  coerced  by  their 
own  theories,  a  love  which  would  be  an  insult  to  a  tom-cat. 
But  the  greatest  error  of  all  lies  in  the  mere  act  of  cut- 

10  ting  up  the  teaching  of  the  New  Testament  into  five  rules. 
It  precisely  and  ingeniously  misses  the  most  dominant  char- 
acteristic of  the  teaching — its  absolute  spontaneity.  The 
abyss  between  Christ  and  all  His  modern  interpreters  is 
that  we  have  no  record  that  He  ever  wrote  a  word,  except 

15  with  His  finger  in  the  sand.  The  whole  is  the  history  of 
one  continuous  and  sublime  conversation.  Thousands  of 
rules  have  been  deduced  from  it  before  these  Tolstoian 
rules  were  made,  and  thousands  will  be  deduced  afterwards. 
It  was  not  for  any  pompous  proclamation,  it  was  not  for 

20  any  elaborate  output  of  printed  volumes ;  it  was  for  a  few 
splendid  and  idle  words  that  the  cross  was  set  up  on 
Calvary,  and  the  earth  gaped,  and  the  sun  was  darkened  at 
noonday. 

1-4  :  b  (cf.  209,  14-210,  6).  9-23  *•  c,  x,  n. 
i,  6,  7,  9,  ii,  13,  14- 


GERALD  STANLEY  LEE 
1862- 

Is  IT  WRONG  FOR  GOOD  PEOPLE  TO  BE  EFFICIENT? 
Chapter  II  of  Book  II  of  "  Crowds  " ' 

PERHAPS  it  will  seem  a  pity  to  spoil  a  book — one  that 
might  have  been  really  rather  interesting — by  putting  the 
word  "  goodness  "  down  flatly  in  this  way  in  the  middle 
of  it. 

And  in  a  book  which  deals  with  crowds,  too,  and  with  5 
business. 

I  would  not  yield  first  place  to  anyone  in  being  tired  of 
the  word.  I  think,  for  one,  that  unless  there  is  something 
we  can  do  to  it  and  something  we  can  do  to  it  now,  it  had 
better  be  dropped.  10 

But  I  have  sometimes  discovered  when  I  had  thought  I 
was  tired  of  a  word,  that  what  I  was  really  tired  of  was 
somebody  who  was  using  it. 

I  do  not  mind  it  when  my  plumber  uses  it.    I  have  heard 
him  use  it  (and  swearing  softly,  I  regret  to  say)  when  it  15 
affected  me  like  a  Hymn  Tune. 

And  there  is  Non,  too. 

I  first  made  Non's  acquaintance  as  our  train  pulled  out 
of  New  York,  and  we  found  ourselves  going  down  together 

on  Friday  afternoon  to  spend  Sunday  with  M in  North  20 

Carolina.     The   first  thing  he   said   was,   when  we   were 

1  By  permission  of  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co. 

5,  6:b.  14-16:!.  17  :b.  18-214,  20  :  v,  n,  w. 

213 


214  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

seated  in  the  Pullman  comfortably  watching  that  big,  still 
world  under  glass  roll  by  outside,  that  he  had  broken  an 
engagement  with  his  wife  to  come.  She  was  giving  a  Tea, 
he  said,  that  afternoon,  and  he  had  faithfully  promised  to 

5  be  there.  But  a  week-end  in  North  Carolina  appealed  to 
him,  and  afternoon  tea — well,  he  explained  to  me,  crossing 
his  legs  and  beaming  at  me  all  over  as  if  he  were  a  whole 
genial,  successful  afternoon  tea  all  by  himself — afternoon 
tea  did  not  appeal  to  him. 

10      He  thought  probably  he  was  a  Non-Gregarious  Person. 
As  he  was  the  gusto  of  our  little  party  and  fairly  reeked 
with  sociability,  and  was  in  a  kind  of  orgy  of  gregarious- 
ness  every  minute  all  the  way  to  Wilmington  (even  when 
he  was  asleep  we  heard  from  him),  we  called  him  the  Non- 

15  Gregarious  Person,  and  every  time  he  piled  on  one  more 
story,  we  reminded  him  how  non-gregarious  he  was.  We 
called  him  Non-Gregarious  all  the  way  after  that — Non  for 
short. 

This  is  the  way  I  became  acquainted  with  Non.     It  has 

20  been  Non  ever  since. 

I  found  in  the  course  of  the  next  three  days  that  when 
Non  was  not  being  the  life  of  the  party  or  the  party  did 
not  need  any  more  life  for  a  while,  and  we  had  gone  off 
by  ourselves,  he  became,  like  most  people  who  let  them- 

25  selves  go,  a  very  serious  person.  When  he  talked  about 
his  business,  he  was  even  religious.  Not  that  he  had  any 
particular  vocabulary  for  being  religious,  but  there  was 
something  about  him  when  he  spoke  of  business — his  own 
business — that  almost  startled  me  at  first.  He  always 

30  seemed  to  be  regarding  his  business  when  he  spoke  of  it 
as  being,  for  all  practical  purposes,  a  kind  of  little  religion 
by  itself. 

21-29 : w. 


GERALD  STANLEY  LEE  215 

Now  Non  is  a  builder  or  contractor. 

For  many  years  now  the  best  way  to  make  a  pessimist 
or  a  confirmed  infidel  out  of  anybody  has  been  to  get  him 
to  build  a  house.  No  better  arrangement  for  not  believing 
in  more  people,  and  for  not  believing  in  more  kinds  of  5 
people  at  once  and  for  life,  has  ever  been  invented  probably 
than  building  a  house.  No  man  has  been  educated,  or  has 
been  really  tested  in  this  world,  until  he  has  built  a  house. 
I  submit  this  proposition  to  anybody  who  has  tried  it,  or 
to  anyone  who  is  going  to  try  it.  There  is  not  a  single  kind  10 
or  type  of  man  who  sooner  or  later  will  not  build  himself, 
and  nearly  everything  that  is  the  matter  with  him,  into 
your  house.  The  house  becomes  a  kind  of  miniature  model 
(such  as  they  have  in  expositions)  of  what  is  the  matter 
with  people.  You  enter  the  door,  you  walk  inside  and  15 
brood  over  them.  Everything  you  come  upon,  from  the 
white  cellar  floor  to  the  timbers  you  bump  your  head  on 
in  the  roof,  reminds  you  of  something  or  of  rows  of  people 
and  of  what  is  the  matter  with  them.  It  is  the  new  houses 
that  are  haunted  now.  Any  man  who  is  sensitive  to  houses  20 
and  to  people  and  who  would  sit  down  in  his  house  when 
it  is  finished  and  look  about  in  it  seriously,  and  think  of  all 
the  people  that  have  been  built,  in  solid  wood  and  stone, 
into  it,  would  get  up  softly  and  steal  out  of  it,  out  of  the 
front  door,  and  never  enter  that  house  again.  25 

This  is  what  Non  saw.  He  saw  how  people  felt  about 
their  houses,  and  how  they  lived  in  them  helplessly  and 
angrily  year  after  year,  and  felt  hateful  about  the  world. 

I  gradually  drew  out  of  him  the  way  he  felt  about  it.    I 
found  he  was  not  as  good  as  some  people  are  at  talking  30 
about  himself,  but  the  subject  was  interesting.     He  began 
his  career  building  houses  for  people,  as  nearly  everyone 

i  :  b.  2-28  :  w,  a  (cf.  201,  21-203,  4)-  29-216,  29  :  v,  k. 


216  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

does.  The  general  idea  is  that  everybody  is  expected  to 
exact  commissions  from  everybody  else,  and  the  owner  is 
expected  to  pay  each  man  his  own  commission  and  then 
pay  all  the  commissions  that  each  man  has  charged  the 
5  other  man.  Every  house  that  got  built  in  this  way  seemed 
to  be  a  kind  of  network  or  conspiracy  of  not  doing  as  you 
would  be  done  by.  Non  did  not  see  any  way  out  at  first, 
just  for  one  man.  He  merely  noticed  how  things  were 
going,  and  he  noticed  that  nearly  every  person  that  he  had 

10  dealings  with,  from  the  bottom  to  the  top  of  the  house, 
seemed  to  make  him  feel  that  he  either  was,  or  would  be, 
or  ought  to  be,  a  grafter.  He  could  not  so  much  as  look 
at  a  house  he  had  built,  through  the  trees  when  he  was 
going  by,  without  wishing  he  could  be  a  better  man,  and 

15  studying  on  how  it  could  be  managed.  His  own  first  houses 
made  him  see  things.  They  proved  to  be  the  making  of 
him,  and  if  similar  houses  have  not  made  similar  men,  it 
is  their  fault.  It  might  not  be  reassuring  to  the  men  who 
are  now  living  in  these  first  houses  to  dwell  too  much  on 

20  this  (and  I  might  say  he  did  not  build  them  alone),  but  it 
seems  necessary  to  bring  out  the  most  striking  thing  about 
Non  in  his  first  stage  as  a  business  man,  vis.:  He  hated  his 
business.  He  made  up  his  mind  he  either  would  make  the 
business  the  kind  of  business  he  liked  or  get  out  of  it.  I 

25  did  not  gather  from  the  way  he  talked  about  it  that  he  had 
any  idea  of  being  an  uplifter.  He  merely  had,  apparently, 
an  obstinate,  doggedly  comfortable  idea  about  himself,  and 
about  what  a  thing  would  have  to  be,  in  this  world,  if  he 
was  connected  with  it.  He  proposed  to  enjoy  his  business. 

30  He  was  spending  most  of  his  time  at  it. 

Other  people  have  had  this  same  happy  thought,  but  they 
seem  to  manage  to  keep  on  being  patient.  Non  could  not 
fall  back  on  being  patient,  and  it  made  him  think  harder. 

29,  30:  b.  26-217,  6:  &• 


GERALD  STANLEY  LEE  217 

The  first  thing  he  thought  of  was  that  doing  his  business 
as  he  thought  he  ought  to,  if  he  once  worked  his  idea  out, 
and  worked  it  down  through  and  organized  it,  might  pay. 
He  almost  had  the  belief  that  people  might  pay  a  man 
a  little  extra,  perhaps,  for  enjoying  his  business.  It  cannot  5 
be  said  that  he  believed  this  immediately.  He  merely 
wanted  to,  and  merely  contrived  new  shrewd  ways  at  first 
of  being  able  to  afford  it.  Gradually  he  began  to  notice  that 
the  more  he  enjoyed  his  business,  the  more  he  enjoyed  it 
with  his  whole  soul  and  body,  enjoyed  it  down  to  the  very  10 
toes  of  his  conscience,  the  more  people  there  were  who 
stepped  into  his  office  and  wanted  him  to  enjoy  his  business 
on  their  houses.  It  was  what  they  had  been  looking  for 
for  years — for  some  builder  who  was  really  enjoying  his 
business.  And  the  more  he  enjoyed  his  business  in  his  15 
own  particular  way — that  of  building  a  house  for  a  man  in 
less  time  than  he  said  he  would,  and  for  less  money,  not 
infrequently  sending  him  a  check  at  the  end  of  it — the  more 
his  business  grew. 

I  do  not  know  that  there  would  be  any  special  harm  in  20 
speaking  of  Non's  idea — of  just  doing  as  you  would  be  done 
by — in  more  moral  or  religious  language,  but  it  is  not  neces- 
sary.   And  I  find  I  take  an  almost  religious  joy  in  looking 
at  the  Golden  Rule  at  last  as  a  plain  business  proposition. 
All  that  happened  was  that  Non  was  original,  saw  some-  25 
thing  that  everybody  thought  they  knew,  and  acted  as  if  it 
were  so.     Theoretically  one  would  not  have  said  that  it 
would  be  original  to  take  an  old  platitudinous  law  like  the 
law  of  supply  and  demand,  and  act  as  if  it  were  so ;  but 
it  was.     At  the  time  Non  was  beginning  his  career  there  30 
was  nothing  in  the  building-market  people  found  harder  to 
buy  than  honesty.     Here  was  something,  he  saw  at  last, 
that  thousands  of  busy  and  important  men  who  did  not  have 
1-19 :  m,  o,  q  (cf.  97,  6-33).  25-27  •  1.  23-32 :  w.  32-218,  12  :  o. 


218  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

time  to  be  detectives,  wanted.  There  did  not  seem  to  be 
anyone  very  actively  supplying  the  demand.  A  big  market, 
a  small  supply,  and  almost  no  competition.  Non  stepped 
in  and  proposed  to  represent  a  man's  interest  who  is  build- 
5  ing  a  house  as  literally  as  the  man  would  represent  himself, 
if  he  knew  all  about  houses.  Everything  has  followed  from 
this.  What  Non's  business  is  now,  when  a  man  is  building 
a  house,  is  to  step  quietly  into  the  man's  shoes,  let  him 
put  on  another  pair,  and  go  quietly  about  his  business.  It 

10  is  not  necessary  to  go  into  the  details.  Any  reader  who 
has  ever  built  a  house  knows  the  details.  Just  take  them 
and  turn  them  around. 

What  those  of  us  who  know  Non  best  liked  about  him 
is  that  he  is  a  plain  business  man,  and  that  he  has  acted 

15  in  this  particular  matter  without  any  fine  moral  frills  or 
remarks.  He  has  done  the  thing  because  he  liked  it  and 
believed  in  it. 

But  the  most  efficient  thing  to  me  about  Non  is  not  the 
way  he  is  making  money  out  of  saving  money  for  other 

20  people,  but  the  way  the  fact  that  he  can  do  it  makes  people 
feel  about  the  world.  Whenever  I  have  a  little  space  of 
discouragement  or  of  impatience  about  the  world  because 
it  does  not  hurry  more,  I  fall  to  thinking  of  Non.  "  Per- 
haps next  week  " — I  say  to  myself  cheerfully — "  I  can  go 

25  down  to  New  York  and  slip  into  Non's  office  and  get  the 
latest  news  as  to  how  religion  is  getting  on.  Or  he  will 
take  me  out  to  lunch,  and  I  will  stop  scolding  or  idealizing, 
and  we  will  get  down  to  business,  and  I  will  take  a  good 
look  into  that  steady-lighted,  unsentimental  face  of  his  while 

30  he  tells  me  across  the  little  corner  table  at  Delmonico's  for 

three  hours  how  shrewd  the  Golden  Rule  is,  and  how  it 

works.     Sometime  when  I  have  just  been  in  New  York, 

and  have  come  home  and  am  sitting  in  my  still  study,  with 

13-17  : 1.  32-219,  12  :  b,  i,  h. 


GERALD  STANLEY  LEE  219 

the  big  idle  mountain  just  outside,  and  the  great  meadow 
and  all  the  world,  like  some  great,  calm,  gentle  spirit  or 
picture  of  itself,  lying  out  there  about  me,  and  I  fall  to 
thinking  of  Non,  and  of  how  he  is  working  in  wood  and 
stone  inside  of  people's  houses,  and  inside  their  lives  day  5 
after  day,  and  of  how  he  is  touching  people  at  a  thousand 
points  all  the  weeks,  being  a  writer,  making  lights  and 
shadows  and  little  visions  of  words  fall  together  just  so, 
seems,  suddenly  a  very  trivial  occupation — like  amusing 
one's  self  with  a  pretty  little  safe  kaleidoscope,  holding  it  10 
up,  aiming  it,  and  shaking  softly  one's  colored  bits  of 
phrases  at  a  world!  Of  course  it  need  not  be  so.  But 
there  are  moments  when  I  think  of  Non  when  it  seems  so. 

In  our  regular  Sunday  religion  we  do  not  seem  to  be 
quite  at  our  best  just  now.  15 

At  least  (perhaps  I  should  speak  for  one)  I  know  I  am 
not. 

Being  a  saint  of  late  is  getting  to  be  a  kind  of  homely, 
modest,  informal,  almost  menial  everyday  thing.     It  makes 
one  more  hopeful  about  religion.    Perhaps  people  who  once  20 
get  the  habit,  and  who  are  being  good  all  the  week,  can 
even  be  good  on  Sunday. 

There  are  many  ways  of  resting  or  leaning  back  upon 
one's  instincts  and  getting  over  to  one's  religion  or  per- 
spective about  the  world.    Mount  Tom  (which  is  my  front  25 
yard,   in   Massachusetts)    helps   sometimes — with  a   single 
look. 

When  I  go  down  to  New  York,  I  look  at  the  Metropolitan 
Tower,  the  Pennsylvania  Station,  the  McAdoo  Tunnels, 
and  at  Non.  30 

If  I  wanted  to  make  anybody  religious,  I  would  try  to 
get  him  to  work  in  Non's  office,  or  work  with  anybody 
who  ever  worked  with  him,  or  who  ever  saw  him;  or  I 
12,  13  :  b.  14,  15,  16,  17,  18-22,  23-27,  28-30 :  b. 


22O  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

would  have  him  live  in  a  house  built  by  him,  or  pay  a  bill 
made  out  by  him. 

It  has  seemed  to  me  that  his  succeeding  and  making 
himself  succeed  in  this  way  is  a  great  spiritual  adventure, 
5  a  pure  religion,  a  difficult,  fresh,  and  stupendous  religion. 

Now  these  many  days  have  I  watched  him  going  up 
and  down  through  all  the  empty  reputations,  the  unmean- 
ing noises  of  the  world,  living  his  life  like  some  low,  old- 
fashioned,  modest  Hymn  Tune  he  keeps  whistling — and  I 
10  have  seen  him  in  fear,  and  in  danger,  and  in  gladness  being 
shrewder  and  shrewder  for  God,  now  grimly,  now  radi- 
antly, hour  by  hour,  day  by  day  getting  rich  with  the  Holy 
Ghost ! 

219,  10-220,  5  :  g-  3-i3  :  o,  h,  n. 
i,  6,  7,  8,  n,  12. 


EMILE  VERHAEREN 
1855- 

THE  LITTLE  VILLAGES  OF  FLANDERS  * 

ENGLAND  is  a  vast  meadow,  sprinkled  here  and  there  with 
spaces  of  tillage.  Flanders  is  like  a  chess-board,  the  various 
squares  of  which  are  covered  with  rye,  wheat,  oats,  flax, 
and  clover.  From  scattered  farms,  little  red-roofed,  white- 
gabled  buildings,  with  their  green  doors  and  shutters,  their  5 
clean,  warm  stables,  comes  the  cheerful  noise  of  flails 
threshing  the  wheat,  of  wheels  ginning  the  flax. 

Life  is  a  simple  and  peaceful  thing  in  these  villages.    The 
church  is,  as  it  were,  the  palace  of  God.     Many  colored 
statues  of  the  saints,  gold,  silken  banners,  are  lavished  on  10 
its  beautifying.    The  organ  plays  daily  for  those  who  wish 
to  hear.    On  great  festivals  the  altars  are  loaded  with  silver 
candlesticks,  the  finest  vestments  adorn  the  shoulders  of 
the  priests,  the  best  voices  of  the  district  thunder  the  Christ- 
mas hymn  or  the  Easter  Alleluia.    A  quiet  reverence  rules  15 
over  all.     Every  ceremony  has  its  beauty,  and  their  joyful 
dignity  affects  the  life  of  the  tiniest  hamlet. 

The  beauty  of  Flanders  is  the  mellow  beauty  of  many 
centuries.     Everywhere   may  be   found   firmly   established 
traditions  or  historical  masterpieces.    In  every  little  church  20 
a  picture,  either  Gothic  or  Renaissance,  recalls  the  age  of 
Van  Eyck  or  of  Rubens.    The  subject  may  be  the  corona- 
tion of  a  fair  virgin,  or  the  ascent  to  heaven,  surrounded 
1  Copyright,  1915,  by  the  Boston  Transcript. 
1-7  :  h,  e.  8-17  :  a,  c,  n.  18-222,  4  :  h,  d. 
221 


222  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

by  angels,  of  a  splendid  Christ.  The  saints  are  represented, 
garlanded  with  roses.  The  holy  families  are  Flemish  fami- 
lies, living  quietly  prosperous  lives  in  cool,  white  rooms, 
with  their  bird  in  its  cage  or  their  parrot  on  its  perch. 

5  Such  is  the  decorative  side  of  the  Flemish  village.  In 
actual  plan  it  consists  probably  of  a  single  principal  street, 
in  which  live  the  lawyer,  the  doctor,  and  the  brewer;  and 
a  few  smaller  roads  which  branch  off  from  the  main  street 
as  from  the  trunk  of  a  tree.  Wherever  such  a  side-road 
10 joins  the  main  street,  a  statue  of  the  Virgin  Mother  of 
Jesus  stands  in  a  niche  of  the  wall,  and  it  is  the  constant 
care  of  the  ladies  of  the  village,  the  wives  of  the  lawyer, 
the  doctor,  and  the  brewer,  to  keep  each  shrine  in  spring 
well  adorned  with  fresh  flowers. 

15  Once  a  week  the  market  is  held  in  the  square  or  round 
about  the  church.  The  farmers  come  to  sell  their  milk 
and  butter;  their  boys  bring  in  young  pigs,  and  sometimes 
sheep;  the  vendors  of  cloth  display  their  little  stocks.  The 
business  done  is  small  enough,  no  doubt,  and  its  basis  nar- 

20  row,  but  the  markets  at  least  create  a  certain  weekly  excite- 
ment and  keenness  of  rivalry. 

But  at  the  Kermesses  this  excitement  and  keenness  be- 
comes a  kind  of  madness.  In  every  cabaret  is  the  sound 
of  music.  Dancing  halls  open  on  every  side.  Harsh  and 

25  violent  orchestras — a  cornet,  a  violin,  a  clarinet,  a  trumpet 
— flog  into  swirling  motion  a  hundred  sturdy  couples. 
Quadrilles  follow  polkas  or  waltzes,  and  the  dancers  stamp 
with  their  heels  so  violently  that  often  the  tiles  of  the  floor 
are  split  in  two.  Drunkenness  and  anger  play  their  part  at 

30  these  times  of  wild  pleasure.  Knives  flash  out  in  quarrel, 
and  often  bloody  work  is  done.  The  farm-lads  fighting  for 
wenches'  favors;  the  lovers  quarreling,  the  old  men,  fever- 

5-14  :  d.  15-21  :  d,  c.  22-29  :  c,  e.  29-223,  2  :  c,  n. 


EMILE  VERHAEREN  223 

ish  with  drink,  present,  almost  unchanged,  the  violent  orgies 
painted  so  long  ago  by  Brouwer  and  Craesbeke. 

Such  is,  or  rather  such  was  before  the  Germans  came, 
the  life  of  the  little  villages  of  Flanders,  Brabant,  Hainault, 
and  Liege.     But  anyone  who  might  see  these  districts  now  5 
would  find  it  hard  to  believe  in  such  a  past. 

The  newspapers  keep  the  world  informed  of  the  fate  of. 
the  towns,  but  they  do  not  trouble  themselves  about  the 
tiny  villages,  hidden  away  in  the  heart  of  the  country.  I 
know  secret  corners  in  the  Ardennes,  in  la  Hesbaye,  in  la  10 
Famenne,  in  le  Borinage,  in  Flanders,  in  Brabant,  where 
the  peasants  are  literally  starving  to  death.  In  time  of 
peace  they  live,  these  poor  folks,  on  the  produce  of  their 
little  farms.  They  kill  their  pig,  cure  it,  and  eat  it  slowly, 
week  by  week,  throughout  the  winter.  They  have  their  15 
little  store  of  potatoes  in  their  cellar  and  their  twenty  sacks 
of  corn  in  their  barn.  For  years  and  years  they  have  al- 
ways lived  thus.  Their  whole  world  is  their  little  house, 
tucked  away  over  there  in  the  distant  country.  It  represents 
all  their  treasure,  all  their  livelihood.  They  toil  all  the  20 
summer  so  that  bread  and  meat  shall  not  be  wanting  in  the 
hard  times  of  winter.  They  are,  as  it  were,  a  Providence 
to  themselves.  They  hope  and  are  confident.  They  cannot 
conceive  any  law,  divine  or  human,  depriving  them  of  what 
they  have  reaped  and  garnered,  of  the  living  they  have  25 
amassed,  lawfully  and  by  their  own  toil,  for  their  wives 
and  children. 

When  the  war  began  little  groups  of  uhlans  began  ap- 
pearing in  the  villages.     They  would  stop  and  ask  a  few 
questions  and  then  go  on  somewhere  else.    At  present  they  30 
behaved  mildly  enough.    Well  aware  of  the  danger  of  am- 
bushes,  they   were   gentle   and   genial.      They   seemed   to 

3-6  :n.  7-15  :  g,  q.  15-22:3.  22-27:^3.  28-224,  2  :  b. 


224  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

regard  the  people  almost  as  their  friends.     Fear  bred  in 
them  excellent  manners. 

But  later  on,  when  whole  regiments  passed  the  way  that 
hitherto  only  scattered  uhlans  had  trod,  the  true  German 
5  arrogance  made  its  terrible  appearance.  There  was  looting 
and  worse;  there  was  massacre.  Conciliatory  fear  gave 
way  to  savagery.  The  world  knows  now  how  much  blood 
must  be  shed,  how  many  ruins  must  be  piled  one  on  another, 
before  German  anger  can  be  assuaged. 

10  And  now  that  the  fires  have  smoldered  out,  now  that 
the  little  villages  are  once  more  left  lonely,  and  those  of 
their  inhabitants  who  have  escaped  flame  and  sword  are 
left  there  to  exist  as  best  they  may,  it  is  for  us  to  think 
for  a  moment  of  the  sinister  silence  of  those  abandoned 

15  lives,  lingering  on  in  the  little  towns  and,  more  tragic  still, 
lost  in  the  depths  of  the  countryside. 

Here,  in  the  fog  of  London,  I  sit  and  picture  to  myself 
the  agony  of  one  of  those  little  villages  of  Campine  or  of 
the  Ardennes,  over  there,  hidden  among  the  valleys  or  lost 

20  in  the  marshes.  Every  one  of  those  sources  of  livelihood 
of  the  poor  peasants  which  I  have  described  has  been 
requisitioned  or  frankly  stolen.  Their  few  poor  cows  have 
been  killed.  Their  sow,  who  once  like  some  prolific  savage 
beast  dawdled  among  the  manure  and  filth  of  the  farmyard 

25  with  her  squealing  turbulent  litter,  has  been  snatched  away 
these  three  months.  In  payment  was  given  a  ticket,  a  ticket 
of  exchange  valid  in  a  distant  land.  But  this  is  not  all. 
Their  sacks  of  corn  have  been  brought  from  their  barns, 
their  turnips  have  been  taken  away  from  the  pits  in  which 

30  they  were  kept.  Their  straw  and  hay  have  become  the  prop- 
erty of  the  invading  cavalry,  who,  no  sooner  had  they  taken 
what  they  needed,  hastened  away.  The  farmsteads  are 

3-9  :  a,  c.  io-i6:b,  c.  17-20  :  q.  27  :  b.  28-32  :  c,  d. 


EMILE  VERHAEREN  225 

stripped  bare;  only  their  inhabitants  remain,  deprived  of 
everything.  Even  their  bed-coverings,  their  poor  mat- 
tresses, their  bedsteads,  have  been  seized.  And  they  remain, 
with  no  possessions  in  the  world  but  the  four  walls  of  their 
cottage  and  the  tiles  of  their  roof.  5 

How  are  they  to  live  henceforth?  They  have  never 
learnt  to  seek  a  livelihood  elsewhere  or  otherhow  than  in 
their  homes  and  on  their  farms.  The  towns  are  far  away, 
and  even  the  roads  to  them  are  often  strange.  While  finally, 
did  they  but  know  it,  little  help  can  come  to  them  out  of  the  10 
towns,  themselves  looted  and  even  sacked,  and  their  shops 
and  houses  deserted  and  shuttered. 

At  least  for  the  towns  there  is  hope.  In  them  remains 
such  authority  as  still  survives.  Some  organization  is 
slowly  emerging.  Neighboring  communes  help  each  other.  15 
Such  provisions  as  are  sent  in  from  abroad  come  to  the 
towns.  Whenever  there  is  concerted  effort  there  is  some 
chance  of  being  heard  and  helped.  Even  in  the  little  towns 
men  will  receive  some  succor,  will  hearten  each  other.  Per- 
haps a  stump  of  railway  line  still  connects  them  with  the  20 
world.  At  least,  carts  pass  through  their  streets.  Some 
energetic  citizen  contrives  to  form  a  tiny  store  of  precious 
food,  and  its  existence  sends  a  gleam  of  hope  through  even 
the  darkest  gloom.  At  least  everything  is  not  dead  and 
desolate.  25 

But  the  villages.  They  have  no  initiative.  To  them  no 
help  comes.  Their  cry  is  solitary,  and  dies  away  unechoed. 
The  cottages  are  scattered  about  the  country,  barely  in  com- 
munication with  one  another.  They  are  to  me  like  little 
islands  of  starvation  and  distress  looming  faintly  through  30 
the  mist. 

Should  not  those  of  us  who  have  a  real  pity  for  the  un- 
13-19  •'  b,  j,  d,  k.  18-25  :  d.  28-31 :  e.  32-226,  7  :  /  (cf.  223,  15-22). 


226  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

precedented  disasters  which  have  overtaken  Belgium  bear 
in  mind  especially  the  despair  of  the  peasant?  His  silence 
covers  the  greatest  misery  of  all ;  for,  despite  his  desolation, 
he  does  not  complain.  And  yet  he  has  given  his  three  or 
5  four  sons  to  his  country,  and  they  are  far  away  from  him, 
in  the  midst  of  the  horrors,  but  where  and  whether  dead  or 
alive,  he  does  not  know. 

This  Christmas  night  I  can  see  him,  sitting  as  usual 
before  the  hearth,  but  this  year  a  hearth  that  is  cold  and 

10  black.  Because  his  arms  are  forbidden  to  toil,  it  is  his 
thought  which  blunders  to  and  fro,  seeking  hope  in  his 
disaster.  This  toil-worn,  silent  man,  who  was  a  hero  at 
the  moment  when  his  country  needed  heroism,  is  faced  now 
with  an  inevitable  death,  here  in  his  house,  here  in  the  house 

15  in  which  his  father  lived  before  him.  He  is  utterly  lonely, 
utterly  helpless.  Lost  in  the  distant  plains,  he  feels  him- 
self lost  in  the  utter  distance  of  the  world. 

Oh — is  human  pity  so  narrow,  so  hampered,  that  it  cannot 
reach  its  hand  over  there  into  Flanders  or  La  Wallonie, 

20  and  bring  some  succor  to  that  silent,  uncomplaining  man 
who,  to-morrow,  perhaps,  may  be  no  more? 

One  mourns,  of  course,  to  see  ruins  piled  one  on  another 
with  such  hate  and  fury;  but  the  sorrow  is  soon  passed. 
Even  the  humblest  peasants  seem  to  treasure  in  their  hearts 

25  a  somber  reserve  of  energy.  They  go  about  their  work 
methodically,  as  though  the  war  was  only  an  evil  dream, 
and  the  real  importance  lay  in  the  waking. 

From  the  ashes  of  these  towns  and  villages  a  new  and 
splendid  life  will  arise.  The  library  of  Louvain  will  be 

30  rebuilt,  the  church  of  St.  Pierre,  the  Market  Hall  of  Ypres, 
the  towers  of  Dixmude  and  Nieuport,  and  each  stone  will 
be  set  in  its  place  with  mortar  as  hard  and  as  solid  as  is 
the  hatred  which  now  we  feel  for  Germany. 

12-17:0,  q.  i8-2i:b,  o,  f.  22-27  :  a.  28-33:0. 


EMILE  VERHAEREN  227 

Those  who  have  died  at  Ypres,  at  Dixmude,  and  at 
Nieuport,  will  be  forever  glorious  in  our  history.  Their 
tombs  will  be  sacred.  The  smallest  village  of  the  Flem- 
ish coast  will  have  in  its  little  cemetery  a  kind  of  under- 
ground school,  from  which  children  may  learn  the  tradi-  5 
tions  of  a  race  as  unchanging  as  water,  and  as  tenacious 
as  fire. 

Only  from  afar  could  I  see  them,  these  little  towns  of 
my  beloved  Flanders,  Dixmude,  Nieuport,  Ypres,  as  in  the 
wind  and  rain  of  last  autumn  I  made  my  way  toward  the  10 
allied  front.  From  England,  through  Boulogne,  Calais, 
Gravelines,  Dunkirk,  I  traveled  to  reach  that  tiny  corner  of 
land  which  was  all  that  remained  of  my  native  country. 
With  an  emotion  compounded  of  joy,  grief,  determination, 
and  pride  was  my  heart  stirred  as  I  saw  that  little  strip  of  15 
Flemish  coast.  I  wept  and  laughed  in  one  moment;  never 
before  had  I  felt  so  keenly  the  nearness  of  my  race.  I 
longed,  if  only  for  a  moment,  to  evoke  within  myself  the 
spirit  of  all  my  ancestors,  so  that  I  might  love  Flanders 
with  a  hundred  hearts  instead  of  one.  This  desire  to  in-  20 
crease  my  personality  became  positively  a  suffering,  until 
during  a  few  moments  of  silence  I  felt  myself  exalted,  com- 
forted, almost  sublime. 

When  first  I  saw  the  shells  they  were  falling  on  Nieu- 
port Bains.     As  they  struck  the  ground,  a  dense  column  25 
of  black  smoke  bellied  upwards  and  outwards.     At  night 
they  flashed  about  the  sky  like  lightning.     It  was  at  once 
horrible  and  beautiful. 

Nieuport  Bains  is  merely  a  row  of  modern  houses,  pretty 
enough  in  their  way,  built  along  a  breakwater  of  stone  and  30 
brick.     Nieuport  town,  however,  is  a  place  of  silence  and 
loveliness;  a  place  of  little  houses,  their  windows   shyly 

1-7  :  n.  8-23  :  q,  r,  a,  c,  f.  24-28  :  j,  f,  n  (cf.  8-23).  29-228,  6 :  s. 


228  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

curtained ;  where  now  and  again,  as  a  step  passes  along  the 
street,  a  hand  pushes  the  curtains  aside,  discreetly  curious. 
The  pavements  are  uneven,  their  stones  framed  in  grass  or 
moss.  The  old  church  in  the  charming  little  square  is  sur- 

5  rounded  with  great  trees  which  throw  their  solid  circular 
shadows  on  the  ground.  Finally,  right  on  the  edge  of  the 
town,  the  huge  Templar's  tower  rears  its  enormous  head 
above  the  countryside.  It  is  like  a  great  monolith,  or  even 
some  fragment  of  an  Egyptian  temple.  I  know  of  no 

10  stranger  or  more  unexpected  sight  than  this  square  colossus 
which  towers  over  the  roads  and  fields  of  Flanders,  like  a 
monument  of  all  the  grandeur  and  nobility  of  the  heroic 
past.  It  stands  for  strength  and  endurance,  as  though  by 
its  example  it  would  raise  the  present  to  the  level  of  the 

15  times  gone  by.  Firm  in  the  accomplishment  of  this  tre- 
mendous mission,  it  defies  all  attacks.  In  vain  have  the 
German  guns  thundered  against  it.  They  have  failed  to 
throw  it  down  because  the  ideal  for  which  it  stands  shall 
outlast,  in  its  nobility,  the  machine-made  terror  of  their 

20  rage. 

The  jewel  of  Dixmude,  besides  the  great  square  dom- 
inated by  an  old  and  splendid  church,  is  the  Beguinage,  a 
tiny  cloistered  thing  where  one  lives  as  at  the  end  of  the 
earth.  Indescribable  is  the  air  of  isolation  in.  this  place. 

25  The  old  almswomen,  not  more  than  three  or  four  in  the 
morning,  perhaps  five  or  six  in  the  afternoon,  move  slowly 
across  the  paths  of  the  central  inclosure,  each  one  at  her 
appointed  and  unvarying  hour.  Their  white  caps  accentuate 
the  gentleness  of  their  faces  like  a  peaceful  halo.  Behind 

30  the  little  windows  other  tired  and  aged  women  busy  them- 
selves with  the  work  of  their  tiny  households.  In  the 
summer  they  take  the  air,  sitting  at  their  doorways.  In 

6-20  :  o,  e,  f,  n  (cf.  227,  29-228,  6).  21-28  :  r,  q.  28-229,  4  :  d,  s. 


EMILE  VERHAEREN  229 

winter  they  sit,  seemingly  without  moving,  in  their  chairs 
before  their  little  fires,  their  only  companion  an  ancient  book 
of  prayers.  They  have  their  treasure  and  their  happiness  in 
the  regular  monotony  of  their  lives.  A  stretch  of  white  wall, 
a  crucifix  above  the  mirror,  a  statuette  of  some  saint  upon  5 
the  mantelshelf,  a  few  straw-seated  chairs,  each  with  its 
rush  mat  in  front  of  it,  these  make  up  the  modest  idea  of 
cleanliness  and  comfort  proper  to  the  place.  Surely,  if 
the  Blessed  Virgin  came  back  to  earth,  it  is  in  some  such 
place  as  this  that  she  would  choose  to  dwell,  some  such  com-  10 
munity  as  this  of  quiet  and  holy  thoughts,  in  which  to  pass 
her  life  now  that  her  son  is  dead.  .  .  . 

Ypres  has  a  past  quite  different  from  that  of  Nieuport  or 
Dixmude,  a  past  of  war  and  magnificence.  Her  main 
square,  next  to  that  of  Brussels,  is  the  most  beautiful  in  15 
the  world.  Her  town  hall,  her  cathedral,  her  market  hall, 
combine  all  the  splendors.  The  town  hall  and  cathedral  are 
assuredly  beautiful,  but  the  market  hall  is  more  than  that, 
for  it  is  unique.  Its  severity,  its  length,  the  symmetry  of 
its  lines,  its  roofs  like  great  wings  feathered  with  slates,  20 
its  soaring  and  massive  walls,  suggest  a  giant  triumphal 
arch.  It  is  so  large  that  in  times  of  peril  the  whole  town 
could  gather  there  for  shelter.  Inside,  an  artist  (but  for  his 
modesty  his  name  should  now  be  one  of  glory)  has  spent  a 
lifetime  over  twenty  frescoes,  each  one  alive  with  the  spirit  25 
of  the  town's  history.  His  name  is  Delbeck.  In  no  dic- 
tionary of  the  celebrities  of  his  time  is  there  mention  either 
of  his  birth  or  his  death.  He  lived  his  humble  life,  passing 
year  after  year  inside  a  famous  building,  with  no  ambition 
except  to  avoid  dishonoring  by  his  art  the  great  walls  that  30 
had  been  intrusted  to  his  care.  And  he  achieved  his  wish, 
for,  so  far  from  dishonoring  the  walls,  he  has  made  them 
more  precious  and  more  tragic  by  his  graciously  colored 
4-12  :  h,  c,  f,  n.  13-22  :  a,  h,  c  (cf.  184,  19-185,  8).  26 :  b.  31-230,  2 :  b,  n. 


230  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

pictures  of  famous  citizens,  of  noble  counts,  of  grave  and 
learned  judges. 

The  Market  Hall  of  Ypres  has  always  been  a  communal 
building.    In  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  the  business  center  of 

5  the  cloth  makers,  the  weavers,  the  fullers.  It  has  seen 
popular  revolts  and  rioting.  It  has  known  agony  and  pas- 
sion, joy  and  pride.  For  centuries  it  has  stood  there,  the 
wonder  of  Ypres. 

Unlike  Bruges,  Ypres  has  never  decked  herself  out  as 

10  a  museum.  Bruges,  in  the  same  way  as  Nuremberg,  is  a 
trap  for  tourists.  She  erects  modern  reproductions  of  old 
buildings,  so  that  the  unwary  visitor  may  take  them  for 
real  antiquities.  At  Ypres  there  is  no  deceit.  The  town 
makes  no  archaeological  toilette  to  tempt  the  innocent 

15  stranger.  The  present  grows  out  of  the  past,  and  the  marks 
of  the  grafting  are  left  unconcealed.  In  that  is  honesty 
and  loyalty. 

Such  were,  before  the  war,  these  three  beautiful  little 
towns  of  Flanders  by  the  sea.    They  were  a  calm  and  glori- 

20  ous  trinity.  To  say  the  name  of  one  of  them  immediately 
brought  to  the  mind  those  of  the  other  two.  The  sea 
loved  them.  She  swept  towards  them  with  a  murmur  of 
waves;  the  tremendous  booming  song  of  her  equinoctial 
winds  was  their  lullaby.  Their  towers  gazed  out  over  the 

25  sandhills  to  where  the  great  ships  were  passing  by  in  the 
open  sea.  They  dominated  a  fertile  land  rescued  long  ago 
by  our  Flemish  ancestors  from  the  very  waves  themselves. 
Fine  roads,  bordered  with  willows,  lead  from  Ypres  to 
Dixmude,  from  Dixmude  to  Nieuport.  The  three  towns 

30  asked  only  to  live  at  peace  in  the  sunshine.  But  they  have 
been  chosen  to  endure  the  noise  and  the  terror  of  great 
guns. 

3-8  :  c,  d.  13  :  b.  9-17  :  e,  d.  21, 22  :  b.  22-27  :  d,  e,  h.  28-32  :  a,  n. 


EMILE  VERHAEREN  231 

To-day  they  are  heaps  of  ruins.  Photographs  taken  dur- 
ing the  many  bombardments  show  the  Market  Hall  of 
Ypres  in  flames.  Between  the  slates  a  curl  of  smoke,  then 
the  ragged  tongues  of  flame,  and  the  whole  building  is 
a  blaze.  The  belfry  still  stands,  a  kind  of  Hercules  pre-  5 
siding  at  the  funeral  pyre.  But  before  long  it  also  will 
totter  and  remain  only  a  huge  stone  skeleton,  never  more  to 
hold  the  great  clock,  which  was  its  soul. 

At  Dixmude,  in  the  principal  church,  a  masterpiece  of 
Jordaens  stood  over  the  altar.  It  showed  the  Adoration  of  10 
the  Magi.  In  the  background  of  the  picture,  humbly 
bowed,  appeared  the  good  St.  Joseph.  Flemish  peasants, 
mockingly  irreverent,  taunt  his  humility,  while  in  the  fore- 
ground is  displayed  all  the  splendor  of  the  Orient.  Strik- 
ingly typical  of  the  Flemish  spirit,  at  once  mystic  and  15 
sensual,  is  the  blend  of  buffoonery  and  reverence  in  one 
picture.  Who  knows  whether  the  painting  still  exists?  It 
has  succumbed,  perhaps,  to  the  German  shells.  Or  is  it 
now  on  its  way  to  Berlin,  where  a  place  is  prepared  for 
it  on  the  walls  of  the  Kaiser  Friedrich  Museum  ?  20 

Ypres,  Nieuport,  and  Dixmude  should  be  able  to  claim  a 
right  to  special  consideration  among  the  towns  of  Belgium 
when  the  time  of  reconstruction  arrives.  They  have  been 
grievously  proved;  their  torture  has  been  the  crudest. 
They  were  undefended ;  it  seems  incredible  that  they  should  25 
have  been  sought  out  by  fate,  in  their  distant  corner  of 
Flanders,  to  meet  a  fiery  martyrdom. 

Far  more  than  Ghent  or  Bruges  or  Antwerp,  they  had 
remained  purely  Flemish.     Each  had  its  dialect,  clear  and 
sonorous,  expressive  of  the  Flemish  soul  in  a  way  that  the  30 
toneless  and  official  culture  of  a  great  town's  dialect  can 
never  be.    War  has  dragged  them  brutally  from  the  silence 

3-8  :  p.  9-20  :  f,  n.  21-232,  2  :  f,  n. 


232  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

that  they  loved.  They  ask  no  better  than  to  go  back  thither, 
into  a  silence  that  is  not  the  dead  abandonment  of  a  German 
domination,  but  the  gentle  silence  of  the  real  Flanders  that 
has  lain  upon  them  through  the  ages. 

i»  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  n,  1.2,  13. 


HENRY  JAMES 
1843-1916 

THE  REFUGEES  IN  ENGLAND  * 

THIS  is  not  a  report  on  our  so  interesting  and  inspiring 
Chelsea  work  since  November  last,  in  aid  of  the  Belgians 
driven  hither  from  their  country  by  a  violence  of  unpro- 
voked invasion  and  ravage  more  appalling  than  has  ever 
before  overtaken  a  peaceful  and  industrious  people ;  it  is  5 
the  simple  statement  of  a  neighbor  and  an  observer  deeply 
affected  by  the  most  tragic  exhibition  of  national  and  civil 
prosperity  and  felicity  suddenly  subjected  to  more  bewilder- 
ing outrage  than  it  would  have  been  possible  to  conceive. 
The  case,  as  the  generous  American  communities  have  shown  10 
they  well  understand,  has  had  no  analogue  in  the  experience 
of  our  modern  generations,  no  matter  how  far  back  we  go ; 
it  has  been  recognized,  in  surpassing  practical  ways,  as  vir- 
tually the  greatest  public  horror  of  our  age,  or  of  all  the 
preceding,  and  one  gratefully  feels,  in  presence  of  so  much  15 
done  in  direct  mitigation  of  it,  that  its  appeal  to  the  pity 
and  the  indignation  of  the  civilized  world  anticipated  and 
transcended  from  the  first  all  superfluity  of  argument.    We 
live  into,  that  is  we  learn  to  cultivate,  possibilities  of  sym- 
pathy and  reaches  of  beneficence  very  much  as  the  stricken  20 
and  the  suffering  themselves  live  into  their  dreadful  history 
and  explore  and  reveal  its  extent;  and  this  admirable  truth 
it  is  that  unceasingly  pleads  with  the  intelligent,  the  for- 
tunate, and  the  exempt  not  to  consent  in  advance  to  any 
1  New  York  Times,  October  17,  1915. 
1-9  :b.  10-18:1.  1-234,  7  :  d. 
233 


234  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

dull  limitation  of  the  helpful  idea.  The  American  people 
have  surely  a  genius,  of  the  most  eminent  kind,  for  with- 
holding any  such  consent  and  despising  all  such  limits; 
and  there  is  doubtless  no  remarked  connection  in  which 

5  they  have  so  shown  the  sympathetic  imagination  in  free 
and  fearless  activity,  that  is,  in  high  originality,  as  under 
the  suggestion  of  the  tragedy  of  Belgium. 

The  happy  fact  in  this  order  is  that  the  genius  commits 
itself,  always  does  so,  by  the  mere  act  of  self-betrayal;  so 

10  that  just  to  assume  its  infinite  exercise  is  but  to  see  how 
it  must  live  above  all  on  happy  terms  with  itself.  That  is 
the  impulse  and  the  need  which  operate  most  fully,  to  our 
recognition,  in  any  form  of  the  American  overflow  of  the 
excited  social  instinct ;  which  circumstance,  as  I  make  these 

15  remarks,  seems  to  place  under  my  feet  a  great  firmness  of 
confidence.  That  confidence  rests  on  this  clear  suggesti- 
bility, to  the  American  apprehension  of  any  and  every 
aspect  of  the  particular  moving  truth;  when  these  aspects 
are  really  presented,  the  response  becomes  but  a  matter  of 

20  calculable  spiritual  health.  Very  wonderful,  I  think,  that 
with  a  real  presentation,  as  I  call  it,  inevitably  affected  by 
the  obstructive  element  of  distance,  of  so  considerable  a 
social  and  personal  disconnection,  of  the  very  violence  done, 
for  that  matter,  to  credibility  as  well,  the  sense  of  related- 

25  ness  to  the  awful  story  should  so  have  emerged  and  so 
lucidly  insisted  on  its  rights.  To  make  that  reflection  in- 
deed might  well  be  to  feel  even  here  on  our  most  con- 
gested ground  no  great  apparatus  of  demonstration  or 
evocation  called  for;  in  spite  of  which,  however,  I  remind 

30  myself  that  as  Reports  and  Tables  are  of  the  essence  of 
our  anxious  duty,  so  they  are  rather  more  than  less  efficient 
when  not  altogether  denuded  of  the  atmosphere  and  the 
human  motive  that  have  conduced  to  their  birth. 

1-7  :  b.  8-1 1 : 1.  16-20,  20-26,  26-33  :  a.  8-33  :  h. 


HENRY  JAMES  235 

I  have  small  warrant  perhaps  to  say  that  atmospheres 
are  communicable,  but  I  can  testify  at  least  that  they  are 
breathable  on  the  spot,  to  whatever  effect  of  depression  or 
of  cljeer,  and  I  should  go  far,  I  feel,  were  I  to  attempt  to 
register  the  full  bittersweet  taste,  by  our  Chelsea  waterside,  5 
all    these    months,    of    the    refugee    element    in   our   vital 
medium.     (The  sweet,  as  I  strain  a  point  perhaps  to  call  it, 
inheres,  to  whatever  distinguishability,  in  our  hope  of  hav- 
ing really  done  something,  verily  done  much:  the  bitter 
ineradicably  seasons  the  consciousness,  hopes,  and  demon-  10 
strations  and  fond  presumptions  and  all.)    I  need  go  no  fur- 
ther, none  the  less,  than  the  makeshift  provisional  gates  of 
Crosby    Hall,    marvelous    monument    transplanted    a    few 
years  since  from  the  Bishopgate  quarter  of  the  city  to  a  part 
of  the  ancient  suburban  site  of  the  garden  of  Sir  Thomas  15 
More,  and  now  serving  with  extraordinary  beneficence  as 
the  most  splendid  of  shelters  for  the  homeless.    This  great 
private  structure,  though  of  the  grandest  civic  character, 
dating  from  the  fifteenth  century  and  one  of  the  noblest 
relics  of  the  past  that  London  could  show,  was  held  a  few  20 
years  back  so  to  cumber  the  precious  acre  or  more  on  which 
it  stood  that  it  was  taken  to  pieces  in  the  candid  com- 
mercial interest  and  in  order  that  the  site  it  had  so  long 
sanctified  should  be  converted  to  such  uses  as  would  stuff 
out  still  further  the  ideal  number  of  private  pockets.    Dis-  25 
may  and  disgust  were  unable  to  save  it :  the  most  that  could 
be  done  was  to  gather  in  with  tenderness  of  care  its  in- 
numerable constituent  parts  and  convey  them  into   safer 
conditions,  where  a  sad  defeated  piety  has  been  able  to  re- 
edify  them  into  some  semblance  of  the  original  majesty.      30 

Strange  withal  some  of  the  turns  of  the  whirligig  of 
time;  the  priceless  structure  came  down  to  the  sound  of 
lamentation,  not  to  say  of  execration,  and  of  the  gnashing 

1-25  :  h.  25-30  :  d,  n.  31-236,  9  :  e,  r,  v. 


236  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

of  teeth,  and  went  up  again  before  cold  and  disbelieving, 
quite  despairing  eyes;  in  spite  of  which  history  appears 
to  have  decided  once  more  to  cherish  it  and  give  a  new 
consecration.  It  is  in  truth  still  magnificent;  it  lives  again 

5  for  our  gratitude  in  its  noblest  particulars  and  the  almost 
incomparable  roof  has  arched  all  this  Winter  and  Spring 
over  a  scene  probably  more  interesting  and  certainly  more 
pathetic  than  any  that  have  ever  drawn  down  its  ancient 
far-off  blessing. 

10  The  place  has  formed  then  the  headquarters  of  the 
Chelsea  circle  of  hospitality  to  the  exiled,  the  broken,  and 
the  bewildered,  and  if  I  may  speak  of  having  taken  home 
the  lesson  of  their  state  and  the  sense  of  their  story  it  is 
by  meeting  them  in  the  finest  club  conditions  conceivable 

15  that  I  have  been  able  to  do  so.  Hither,  month  after  month 
and  day  after  day  the  unfortunates  have  flocked,  each  after- 
noon, and  here  the  comparatively  exempt,  almost  ashamed 
of  their  exemption  in  presence  of  so  much  woe,  have  made 
them  welcome  to  every  form  of  succor  and  reassurance. 

20  Certain  afternoons,  each  week,  have  worn  the  character  of 
the  huge  comprehensive  tea  party,  a  fresh  well-wisher  dis- 
charging the  social  and  financial  cost  of  the  fresh  occasion — 
which  has  always  festally  profited,  in  addition,  by  the  ex- 
traordinary command  of  musical  accomplishment,  the  high 

25  standard  of  execution,  that  is  the  mark  of  the  Belgian 
people.  This  exhibition  of  our  splendid  local  resource  has 
rested,  of  course,  on  a  multitude  of  other  resources,  still 
local,  but  of  a  more  intimate  hospitality,  little  by  little 
worked  out  and  applied,  and  into  the  detail  of  which  I 

30  may  not  here  pretend  to  go  beyond  noting  that  they  have 
been  accountable  for  the  large  house  and  fed  and  clothed 
and  generally  protected  and  administered  numbers,  all  pro- 
vided for  in  Chelsea  and  its  outer  fringe,  on  which  our 

15-26  :  c,  h.  26-237,  2  :  d,  1.  235,  1-237,  8  :  b>  h> x  (cf-  218, 18-220,  13). 


HENRY  JAMES  237 

scheme  of  sociability  at  Crosby  Hall  itself  has  up  to  now 
been  able  to  draw.  To  have  seen  this  scheme  so  long  in 
operation  has  been  to  find  it  suggest  many  reflections,  all  of 
the  most  poignant  and  moving  order ;  the  foremost  of  which 
has,  perhaps,  had  for  its  subject  that  never  before  can  the  5 
wanton  hand  of  history  have  descended  upon  a  group  of 
communities  less  expectant  of  public  violence  from  without 
or  less  prepared  for  it  and  attuned  to  it. 

The  bewildered  and  amazed  passivity  of  the  Flemish  civil 
population,  the  state  as  of  people  surprised  by  sudden  ruf-  10 
nans,  murderers,  and  thieves  in  the  dead  of  night  and  hurled 
out,  terrified  and  half  clad,  snatching  at  the  few  scant  house- 
hold goods  nearest  at  hand,  into  a  darkness  mitigated  but 
by  flaring  incendiary  torches,  this  has  been  the  experience 
stamped  on  our  scores  and  scores  of  thousands,  whose  testi-  15 
mony  to  suffered  dismay  and  despoilment,  silence  alone,  the 
silence  of  vain  uncontributive  wonderment,  has  for  the  most 
part  been  able  to  express.  Never  was  such  a  revelation  of 
a  deeply  domestic,  a  rootedly  domiciled  and  instinctively 
and  separately  clustered  people,  a  mass  of  communities  for  20 
which  the  sight  of  the  home  violated,  the  objects  helping  to 
form  it  profaned,  and  the  cohesive  family,  the  Belgian  ideal 
of  the  constituted  life,  dismembered,  disemboweled,  and 
shattered,  had  so  supremely  to  represent  the  crack  of  doom 
and  the  end  of  everything.  There  have  been  days  and  days  25 
when  under  this  particular  impression  the  mere  aspect  and 
manner  of  our  serried  recipients  of  relief,  something  vague, 
and  inarticulate  as  in  persons  who  have  given  up  every- 
thing but  patience  and  are  living,  from  hour  to  hour,  but 
in  the  immediate  and  the  unexplained,  has  put  on  such  a  30 
pathos  as  to  make  the  heart  sick.  One  has  had  just  to 
translate  any  seated  row  of  figures,  thankful  for  warmth 
and  light  and  covering,  for  sustenance  and  human  words 
9-18  :  i,  c,  h.  18-25  :  c.  25-31 :  i.  31-238,  5  :  c,  n. 


238  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

and  human  looks,  into  terms  that  would  exemplify  some 
like  exiled  and  huddled  and  charity-fed  predicament  for  our 
superior  selves,  to  feel  our  exposure  to  such  a  fate,  our 
submission  to  it,  our  holding  in  the  least  together  under  it, 

5  darkly  unthinkable. 

Dim  imaginations  would  at  such  moments  interpose,  a 
confused  theory  that  even  at  the  worst  our  adventurous 
habits,  our  imperial  traditions,  our  general  defiance  of  the 
superstition  of  domesticity  would  dash  from  our  lips  the 

10  cup  of  bitterness ;  from  these  it  was  at  all  events  impossible 
not  to  come  back  to  the  consciousness  that  almost  every 
creature  there  collected  was  indebted  to  our  good  offices  for 
the  means  to  come  at  all.  I  thought  of  our  parents  and 
children,  our  brothers  and  sisters,  aligned  in  borrowed  gar- 

15  ments  and  settled  to  an  as  yet  undetermined  future  of 
eleemosynary  tea  and  buns,  and  I  ask  myself,  doubtless  to 
little  purpose,  either  what  grace  of  resignation  or  what 
clamor  of  protest  we  should,  beneath  the  same  star,  be  noted 
as  substituting  for  the  inveterate  Belgian  decency. 

20  I  can  only  profess  at  once  that  the  sense  of  this  last, 
round  about  one,  was  at  certain  hours,  when  the  music 
and  the  chant  of  consolation  rose  in  the  stillness  from  our 
improvised  stage  at  the  end  of  the  great  hall,  a  thing  to 
cloud  with  tears  any  pair  of  eyes  lifted  to  our  sublime  saved 

25  roof  in  thanks  for  its  vast  comprehension.  Questions  of 
exhibited  type,  questions  as  to  a  range  of  form  and  tradi- 
tion, a  measure  of  sensibility  and  activity,  not  our  own, 
dwindled  and  died  before  the  gross  fact  of  our  having  here 
an  example  of  such  a  world  tragedy  as  we  supposed  Europe 

30  had  outlived,  and  that  nothing  at  all  therefore  mattered  but 
that  we  should  bravely  and  handsomely  hold  up  our  quite 
heavy  enough  end  of  it. 

It  is  because  we  have  responded  in  this  degree  to  the 

6-13:0.   13-19  :  w.  20-32:!,  h. 


HENRY  JAMES  239 

call  unprecedented  that  we  are,  in  common  with  a  vast 
number  of  organizations  scattered  through  these  islands, 
qualified  to  claim  that  no  small  part  of  the  inspiration  to 
our  enormous  act  of  welcome  resides  in  the  moral  interest 
it  yields.  One  can  indeed  be  certain  of  such  a  source  of  5 
profit  but  in  the  degree  in  which  one  has  found  one's  self 
personally  drawing  upon  it;  yet  it  is  obvious  that  we  are 
not  treated  every  day  to  the  disclosure  of  a  national  char- 
acter, a  national  temperament  and  type,  confined  for  the 
time  to  their  plainest  and  stoutest  features  and  set,  on  a  10 
prodigious  scale,  in  all  the  relief  that  the  strongest  alien 
air  and  alien  conditions  can  give  them.  Great  salience,  in 
such  a  case,  do  all  collective  idiosyncrasies  acquire — upon 
the  fullest  enumeration  of  which,  however,  as  the  Belgian 
instance  and  the  British  atmosphere  combine  to  represent  15 
them,  I  may  not  now  embark,  prepossessed  wholly  as  I  am 
with  the  more  generally  significant  social  stamp  and  human 
aspect  so  revealed,  and  with  the  quality  derived  from  these 
things  by  the  multiplied  examples  that  help  us  to  take  them 
in.  This  feeling  that  our  visitors  illustrate  above  all  the  20 
close  and  comfortable  household  life,  with  every  implica- 
tion of  a  seated  and  saturated  practice  of  it,  practice  of  the 
intimate  and  private  and  personal,  the  securely  sensual  and 
genial  arts  that  flow  from  it,  has  been  by  itself  the  key  to 
a  plenitude  of  observation  and  in  particular  to  as  much  25 
friendly  searching  insight  as  one  could  desire  to  enjoy. 

The  moving,  the  lacerating  thing  is  the  fashion  after 
which  such  a  reading  of  the  native  elements,  once  adopted, 
has  been  as  a  light  flaring  into  every  obscurest  retreat,  as 
well  as  upon  any  puzzling  ambiguity,  of  the  state  of  shock  30 
of  the  rational  character  under  the  infamy  of  the  outrage 
put  upon  it.  That  they  of  all  people  the  most  given  over  to 
local  and  patriarchal  beatitude  among  the  admirable  and 

5-20  :  x.  20-26  :  d.  27-240,  9  :  x. 


240  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

the  cherished  objects  handed  down  to  them  by  their  so 
interesting  history  on  every  spot  where  its  action  has  been 
thickest — that  is  on  every  inch,  so  to  speak,  of  their  teem- 
ing territory — should  find  themselves  identified  with  the 
5  most  shamelessly  cynical  public  act  of  which  the  civilized 
world  at  this  hour  retains  the  memory,  is  a  fact  truly  repre- 
senting the  exquisite  in  the  horrible ;  so  peculiarly  addressed 
has  been  their  fate  to  the  desecration  of  ideals  that  had 
fairly  become  breath  of  their  lungs  and  flesh  of  their  flesh. 

10  Oh !  The  installed  and  ensconced,  the  immemorially  edified 
and  arranged,  the  thoroughly  furnished  and  provided  and 
nourished  people! — not  in  the  least  besotted  or  relaxed  in 
their  security  and  density,  like  the  self-smothered  society 
of  the  ancient  world  upon  which  the  earlier  Huns  and 

15  Vandals  poured  down,  but  candidly  complacent  and  ad- 
mirably intelligent  in  their  care  for  their  living  tradition, 
and  only  so  off  their  guard  as  to  have  consciously  set  the 
example  of  this  care  to  all  such  as  had  once  smoked  with 
them  their  wondrous  pipe  of  peace.  Almost  any  posture 

20  of  stupefaction  would  have  been  conceivable  in  the  shaken 
victims  of  this  delusion ;  I  can  speak  best,  however,  but  of 
what  I  have  already  glanced  at,  that  temperamental  weight 
of  their  fall  which  has  again  and  again,  at  sight  of  many 
of  them  gathered  together,  made  the  considering  heart 

25  as  heavy  for  them  as  if  it  too  had  for  the  time  been 
worsted. 

However,  it  would  take  me  far  to  tell  of  half  the  pene- 
trating admonitions,  whether  of  the  dazed  or  of  the  roused 
appearance,  that  have  for  so  long  almost  in  like  degree 

30  made  our  attention  ache ;  I  think  of  particular  faces,  in  the 
whole  connection,  when  I  want  most  to  remember — since  to 
remember  always,  and  never,  never  to   forget,  is  a  pre- 
scription shining  before  us  like  a  possible  light  of  dawn; 
10-26 :  c,  x,  n,  p.  238,  6-240,  26 :  c,  h,  x,  b  (cf.  108,  15-111,  13). 


HENRY  JAMES  241 

faces  saying  such  things  in  their  silence,  or  in  their  speech 
of  quite  different  matters,  as  to  make  the  only  thinkable 
comment  or  response  some  word  or  some  gesture  of  re- 
prieve to  dumb  or  to  dissimulated  anguish.  Blessed  be  the 
power  that  has  given  to  civilized  men  the  appreciation  of  5 
the  face — such  an  immeasurable  sphere  of  exercise — for  it 
has  this  monstrous  trial  of  the  peoples  come  to  supply. 
Such  histories,  such  a  record  of  moral  experience,  of  emo- 
tion convulsively  suppressed,  as  one  meets  in  some  of  them, 
and  this  even  if  on  the  whole  one  has  been  able  to  think  10 
of  these  special  allies,  all  sustainingly,  much  rather  as  the 
sturdiest  than  as  the  most  demonstrative  of  sufferers.  I 
have  in  these  rapid  remarks  to  reduce  my  many  impressions 
to  the  fewest,  but  must  even  thus  spare  one  of  them  for 
commemoration  of  the  admirable  cast  of  working  counte-  15 
nance  we  are  rewarded  by  the  sight  of  wherever  we  turn 
amid  the  quantity  of  helpful  service  and  all  the  fruitful  in- 
dustries that  we  have  been  able  to  start  and  that  keep  them- 
selves going. 

These   are   the  lights   in   the   picture,   and   who   indeed  20 
would  wish  that  the  lights  themselves  should  be  anything 
less  than  tragic?    The  strong  young  men  (no  young  men 
are   familiarly   stronger,)    mutilated,    amputated,    dismem- 
bered in  penalty  for  their  defense  of  their  soil  against  the 
horde  and  now  engaged  at  Crosby  Hall  in  the  making  of  25 
handloom  socks,  to  whom  I  pay  an  occasional  visit  much 
more   for  my  own   cheer,   I   apprehend,   than   for  theirs, 
express  so  in  their  honest  concentration  under  difficulties 
the  actual  and  general  value  of  their  people  that  just  to  be 
in  their  presence  is  a  blest  renewal  of  faith.     Excellent,  30 
exemplary,  is  this  manly,  homely,  handy  type,  grave  in  its 
somewhat   strained   attention,  but  at  once  lighted   to   the 
briefest,  sincerest  humor  of  protest  by  any  direct  reference 
8-19:  j,h,  22-30:  c,  i. 


242  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

to  the  general  cruelty  of  its  misfortune.  Anything  but 
unsuggestive,  the  range  of  the  "  quiet "  physiognomy  when 
one  feels  the  consciousness  behind  it  not  to  have  run  thin. 
Thick  and  strong  is  the  good  Flemish  sense  of  life  and  all 

5  its  functions — which  fact  is  responsible  for  no  empty  and 
really  unmodeled  "  mug." 

I  am  afraid  at  the  same  time  that  if  the  various  ways 
of  being  bad  are  beyond  our  reckoning,  the  condition  and 
the  action  of  exemplary  goodness  tend  rather  to  reduce  to 

10  a  certain  rich  unity  of  appearance  those  marked  by  them, 
however  dissociated  from  each  other  such  persons  may  have 
been  by  race  and  education.  Otherwise  what  tribute 
shouldn't  I  be  moved  to  pay  to  the  gentleman  of  Flanders 
to  whom,  the  specially  improvised  craftsmen  I  have  just 

15  mentioned  owe  their  training  and  their  inspiration  ? — 
through  his  having,  in  his  proscribed  and  denuded  state, 
mastered  the  craft  in  order  to  recruit  them  to  it  and,  in 
fine,  so  far  as  my  observation  has  been  concerned,  exhibit 
clear  human  virtue,  courage  and  patience,  and  the  humility 

20  of  sought  fellowship  in  privation,  with  an  unconscious 
beauty  that  I  should  be  ashamed  in  this  connection  not  to 
have  noted  publicly.  I  scarce  know  what  such  a  "  person- 
ality "  as  his  suggests  to  me  if  not  that  we  had  all,  on  our 
good  Chelsea  ground,  best  take  up  and  cherish  as  directly 

25  and  intimately  as  possible  every  scrap  of  our  community 
with  our  gentlemen  of  Flanders.  I  make  such  a  point  as 
this,  at  the  same  time,  only  to  remember  how,  almost 
wherever  I  have  tried  to  turn,  my  imagination  and  my 
intelligence  have  been  quickened,  and  to  recognize  in 

30  particular,   for  that  matter,  that  this  couldn't  possibly  be 

more  the  case  for  them  than  in  visiting  a  certain  hostel  in 

one  of  our  comparatively  contracted  but  amply  decent  local 

Squares — riverside  Chelsea  having,  of  course,  its  own  urban 

7-243,  9 :  o  (cf.  106, 11-107, 12)- 


HENRY  JAMES  243 

identity  in  the  multitudinous  County  of  London;  which, 
in  itself  as  happy  an  example,  doubtless,  of  the  hostel 
smoothly  working  as  one  need  cite,  placed  me  in  grateful 
relation  with  a  lady,  one  of  the  victims  of  her  country's 
convulsion  and  in  charge  of  the  establishment  I  allude  to,  5 
whom  simply  to  "  meet,"  as  we  say,  is  to  learn  how  sin- 
gular a  dignity,  how  clear  a  distinction,  may  shine  in  active 
fortitude  and  economic  self-effacement  under  an  all  but 
crushing  catastrophe. 

'Talk  about'  faces — !"  I  could  but  privately  ejaculate  10 
as  I  gathered  the  senses  of  all  that  this  one  represented  in 
the  way  of  natural  nobleness  and  sweetness,  a  whole  past 
acquaintance  with  letters  and  art  and  taste,  insisting  on  their 
present  restrictedness  to  bare  sisterly  service. 

The   proud   rigor   of  association   with   pressing   service  15 
alone,  with  absolutely  nothing  else,  the  bare  commodious 
house,  so  otherwise  known  to  me  of  old  and  now,  like  most 
of  our  hostels  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  the  most  unconditioned 
of  loans  from  its  relinquishing  owner;  the  lingering  look  of 
ancient  peace  in  the  precincts,  an  element  I  had  already  as  20 
I  passed  and  repassed,  at  the  afternoon  hour,  found  some- 
how not  at  all  dispelled  by  the  presence  in  the  central  green 
garden  itself  of  sundry  maimed  and  hobbling  and  smiling 
convalescents  from  an  extemporized  small  hospital  close  at 
hand,  their  battered  khaki  replaced  by  a  like  uniformity  of  25 
the  loose  light  blue,  and  friendly  talk  with  them  through  the 
rails  of  their  inclosure  as  blessed  to  one  participant  at  least 
as  friendly  talk  with  them  always  and  everywhere  is ;  such 
were  the  hovering  elements  of  an  impression  in  which  the 
mind  had  yet  mainly  to  yield  to  that  haunting  force  on  the  30 
part  of  our  waiting  prescripts  which  never  consent  to  be 
long  denied.     The  proof  of  which  universally  recognized 
power  of  their  spell  amid  us  is  indeed  that  they  have  led 

i5-32:b,  c. 


244  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

me  so  far  with  a  whole  side  of  my  plea  for  them  still 
unspoken. 

This,  however,  I  hope  on  another  occasion  to  come  back 
to,  and  I  am  caught  meanwhile  by  my  memory  of  how  the 

5  note  of  this  conviction  was  struck  for  me,  with  extraordi- 
nary force,  many  months  ago  and  in  the  first  flush  of  rec- 
ognition of  what  the  fate  that  had  overtaken  our  earliest 
tides  of  arrival  and  appeal  really  meant — meant  so  that 
all  fuller  acquaintance,  since  pursued,  has  but  piled  one 

10  congruous  reality  after  another  upon  the  horror.  It  was 
in  September,  in  a  tiny  Sussex  town  which  I  had  not  quitted 
since  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  and  here  the  advent  of  our 
first  handful  of  fugitives  before  the  warning  of  Louvain 
and  Aerschott  and  Termonde  and  Dinant  had  just  been  an- 

15  nounced.  Our  small  hilltop  city,  covering  the  steep  sides 
of  the  compact  pedestal  crowned  by  its  great  church,  had 
reserved  a  refuge  at  its  highest  point,  and  we  had  waited 
all  day,  from  occasional  train  to  train,  for  the  moment  at 
which  we  should  attest  our  hospitality.  It  came  at  last, 

20  but  late  in  the  evening,  when  a  vague  outside  rumor  called 
me  to  my  doorstep,  where  the  unforgettable  impression  at 
once  assaulted  me.  Up  the  precipitous  little  street  that  led 
from  the  station,  over  the  old  grass-grown  cobbles,  where 
vehicles  rarely  pass,  came  the  panting  procession  of  the 

25  homeless  and  their  comforting,  their  almost  clinging  enter- 
tainers, who  seemed  to  hurry  them  on  as  in  a  sort  of  over- 
flow of  expression  or  fever  of  charity.  It  was  swift  and 
eager,  in  the  Autumn  darkness  and  under  the  flare  of  a 
single  lamp — with  no  vociferation  and  but  for  a  woman's 

30  voice  scarce  a  sound  save  the  shuffle  of  mounting  feet 
and  the  thick-drawn  breath  of  emotion. 

The  note  I  except,  however,  was  that  of  a  young  mother 
carrying  her  small   child   and   surrounded  by  those  who 

3-3i:v,h. 


HENRY  JAMES  245 

bore  her  on  and  on,  almost  lifting  her  as  they  went  together. 
The  resonance  through  our  immemorial  old  street  of  her 
sobbing  and  sobbing  cry  was  the  voice  itself  of  history;  it 
brought  home  to  me  more  things  than  I  could  then  quite 
take  the  measure  of,  and  these  just  because  it  expressed  5 
for  her  not  direct  anguish,  but  the  incredibility,  as  we 
should  say,  of  honest  assured  protection.  Months  have 
elapsed,  and  from  having  been  then  one  of  a  few  hundred 
she  is  now  one  of  scores  and  scores  of  thousands;  yet  her 
cry  is  still  in  my  ears,  whether  to  speak  most  of  what  she  1 
had  lately  or  what  she  actually  felt,  and  it  plays  to  my  own 
sense,  as  a  great  fitful  tragic  light  over  the  dark  exposure 
of  her  people. 

2-13  :h,n. 
6,  8,  9,  n,  12,  13,  14. 


THE  GREAT  TRIUMPH  * 

WERE  the  public  and  our  city  officials  truly  alive  to  the 
significance  of  the  tremendous  moral  victory  won  by  the 
President  of  the  United  States  yesterday,  flags  would  be 
flying  from  every  building  and  bells  would  be  pealing  from 

5  every  church  tower  in  this  city  to-day.  Because  it  is  a 
victory  of  peace,  and  for  peace,  and  not  one  purchased  at 
the  cost  of  thousands  of  human  lives  on  a  bloody  battlefield, 
these  external  signs  of  thankfulness  and  of  glorification  are 
lacking.  Within  the  hearts  of  all  Americans  who  have 

10  understood  the  meaning  of  what  has  been  going  on  and  the 
gravity  of  the  crisis  through  which  the  Republic  has  passed, 
there  is,  however,  a  devout  thankfulness  and  a  profound 
gratitude  to  President  Wilson  which  needs  no  outward  ex- 
pression to  render  it  complete.  They  know  that  it  has  been 

15  given  to  the  President  to  achieve  a  moral  victory  for  his 
country  and  for  all  humanity,  which  forever  insures  him 
a  foremost  place  in  the  pages  of  American  history,  and  has 
mightily  enhanced  the  power  and  prestige  of  the  United 
States.  Without  mobilizing  a  regiment  or  assembling  a 

20  fleet,  by  sheer  dogged,  unswerving  persistence  in  advocating 
the  right,  he  has  compelled  the  surrender  of  the  proudest, 
the  most  arrogant,  the  best  armed  of  nations,  and  he  has 
done  it  in  completest  self-abnegation,  but  in  fullest,  most 
patriotic  devotion  to  American  ideals. 

25      No  error  could  be  more  serious  than  that  of  looking  upon 

this  splendid  success  of  our  diplomacy  as  a  victory  on  a 

1  Editorial  in  The  New  York  Evening  Post,  August  2,  1915. 

1-9:0.   1-24  :  v.   19-24  :  x.  25-247,  29:  k,  j. 

246 


THE  GREAT  TRIUMPH  247 

mere  punctilio,  a  satisfaction  like  that  of  the  duelist  upon 
a  "  point  of  honor."  The  principle  for  which  we  were  con- 
tending, though  it  happened  to  be  embodied  in  a  form 
which,  in  the  concrete,  might  be  made  to  appear  as  of 
trifling  character,  was  a  principle  than  which  nothing  could  5 
be  more  vital.  The  carrying  on  of  commerce  upon  the  high 
seas — even  commerce  in  contraband — without  peril  to  the 
lives  either  of  crew  or  of  passengers,  is  one  of  the  few  privi- 
leges of  international  intercourse  in  time  of  war  which  have 
been  held  intact  and  unchallenged  for  generations.  In  set-  10 
ting  at  naught  this  simple  and  unmistakable  principle,  Ger- 
many justly  earned  the  title  of  "an  outlaw  nation";  and 
it  was  to  vindicate  and  reestablish  the  law  of  nations  in  a 
vital  point  that  we  interposed  our  veto.  The  crime  of  the 
Lusitania  massacre  did  not  consist  in  the  fact  that  there  15 
were  Americans  among  the  murdered;  but  it  was  owing 
to  that  fact  that  we  had  specific  ground  for  intervening  on 
our  own  account — intervening  without  making  ourselves 
the  judges  of  other  nations  in  their  relation  to  each  other. 
Had  the  matter,  however,  concerned  merely  the  slight  ad-  20 
vantages  or  opportunities  immediately  at  risk  for  Amer- 
icans, we  could  not  have  nerved  ourselves  to  the  point  of 
insisting  on  our  rights  at  the  peril  of  the  bare  possibility 
of  war  with  a  nation  with  which  ours  desired  to  be  at  peace. 
Our  case  was  impregnable  in  law  and  justice;  but  what  25 
made  it  great  and  momentous  was  that  it  was  in  principle 
the  case  of  international  right,  the  case  of  civilized  warfare 
against  unshackled  terrorism — in  a  word,  the  case  of  civil- 
ization itself. 

It  is  because  of  these  facts  that  President  Wilson's  tri-  30 
umph  goes  far  beyond  the  bounds  of  our  country.     If  it 
constitutes  a  chapter  in  our  history  of  which  Americans 
always  will  be  proud,  it  is  an  achievement  that  serves  the 

20,  21  : 1.  20-29  :  c,  f,  n. 


248  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

whole  world,  because,  as  Mr.  Wilson  said,  he  pleaded  the 
cause  not  merely  of  America,  but  of  humanity.  But  to  our 
mind  the  greatest  lesson  of  it  all  is  the  unconquerable 
power  of  moral  ideals  which  is  thus  once  more  demon- 

5  strated.  In  a  year  to  try  men's  souls,  when  nations  are 
being  drenched  with  their  own  blood  and  that  of  their 
neighbors,  when  many  of  our  solidest  citizens  have  been 
completely  thrown  off  their  balance  and  have  cried  out  that 
we,  too,  must  become  as  wild  beasts  and  make  ready  to 

10  destroy  fellow-men,  Woodrow  Wilson  set  his  face  like 
flint  against  anything  of  the  kind.  Knowing  well  the  critics 
whose  abuse  he  thereby  courted ;  perfectly  aware  that  he 
would  be  charged  with  failure  adequately  to  prepare  for 
possibilities,  he  rigidly  refused  to  give  one  single  order  to 

15  army  or  navy  that  would  have  inflamed  public  sentiment 
or  called  forth  counter-threats  from  Germany.  In  his  every 
personal  act  he  set  a  splendid  example  of  absolute  self- 
repression,  of  faith,  of  courage  in  the  darkest  hour. 

We  know  well  what  the  critics  will  say  now :  that  the 

20  story  would  have  been  different  had  Germany  not  had  her 
hands  full,  had  she  been  free  to  strike  us  as  well  as  to  deal 
simultaneously  with  France,  Russia,  Servia,  and  Great 
Britain.  There  will  be  the  writers  in  Sunday  magazines  to 
say  that  we  have  merely  postponed  the  evil  day;  that  Ger- 

25  many  will  never  forget  this  humiliation,  and  will  only  wait 
to  recover  from  the  terrible  costs  of  the  present  struggle 
to  strike  at  us.  This,  and  much  more  stuff  of  the  same 
kind,  we  shall  doubtless  hear  from  our  patriots  for  pub- 
licity. We  say  without  equivocation  that  it  all  demonstrates 

30  anew  the  moral  power  of  this  republic,  which  is  infinitely 

superior  to  any  power  of  arms  that  it  could  possibly  acquire. 

We  insist  that  the  whole  world  must  learn  again  that  the 

time  has  come  to  substitute   for  the  horrible  waste  and 

2-5  : 1.  5-i  i :  x.  1 1-18 :  c,  n.  19-29 :  q,  1.  19-249,  4  :  k,  v. 


THE  GREAT  TRIUMPH  249 

slaughter  of  Europe  some  better  means  of  settling  disputes 
than  that  which  writes  us  down  a  universe  of  cutthroats 
and  barbarians,  and  that  the  United  States  has  once  more 
pointed  the  way. 

And  so  we  look  to  Woodrow  Wilson  to  perform  still  5 
another  service  to  the  Republic  by  saving  us  from  those 
who  would  rob  the  poor,  starve  every  movement  for  en- 
lightened  social  development,   and   transplant  to   our  soil 
every  evil  of  European  militarism  by  squandering  vast  sums 
upon  training  men  to  kill,  to  maim,  to  burn,  and  to  destroy,  i: 
But  whether  that  is  in  his  purview  or  not,  however  far  he 
may  seek  to  go  to  arm  the  country,  we  of  the  Evening  Post 
acknowledge  to  him  to-day  the  colossal  debt  that  his  country 
and  humanity  owe  him.     No  one  can  overestimate  it;  no 
one  can  even  foresee  how  far-reaching  its  effects  may  be.  15 
It  may  result  in  the  ending  of  the  war  of  the  nations;  it 
may  bear  fruit  of  greater  significance  for  humanity  than 
that.     To-day  we  would  merely  set  down  the  gratitude  of 
a  nation  and  solemnly  record  our  belief  that,  more  than 
ever,  Americans  may  be  proud  of  their  country  as  that  20 
which  more  than  any  other  is  "  an  example  and  a  guiding 
star  to  all  mankind." 

5-10  :  x,  o.  14-18  :  c.  5-22  :  k,  n. 
i,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  9,  12. 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY1 

A  NOVEL  from  the  pen  of  John  Galsworthy  is  an  event 
of  particular  moment  just  now;  it  is  no  wonder  that  readers 
were  alert  when  "The  Freelands  "  (Scribners)  began  to 
run  in  an  American  magazine.  There  was  a  time  when  a 
5  novel  from  Wells  or  from  Bennett  awakened  the  same 
interest.  When  Wells  had  just  published  "  Tono-Bungay  " 
and  "  The  New  Machiavelli,"  when  Arnold  Bennett  had 
just  published  "  Old  Wives'  Tales "  and  "  Clay-hanger," 
readers  tingled  to  their  finger  tips.  Were  these  men  great 
10  enough  to  hold  the  standard  they  themselves  had  set  ? 
"  Ann  Veronica,"  "  Marriage,"  "  Passionate  Friends,"  and 
last  and  least  "  Sir  Isaac  Harmon's  Wife  "  were  a  pro- 
gressive deterioration.  As  to  Arnold  Bennett,  "  Hilda  Less- 
ways,"  "The  Card,"  "The  Regent,"  and  "The  Price  of 
15  Love  "  showed  plainly  enough  that  he  had  reached  high- 
water  mark  in  his  art  and  the  rest  was  what  he  had  left 
over. 

Of  the  same  generation  and  almost  the  same  age,  John 
Galsworthy  had  his  annus  mirabilis   in   1913.      '''  The  Inn 
20  of  Tranquillity  "  gave  hope  of  a  sense  of  beauty  to  equal 
Pater's  gift ;  and  "  The  Dark  Flower,"  an  entirely  new  type 
of  novel,  was  held  almost  throughout  at  point  of  lyric  rap- 
ture.   Could  he  go  on?    If  he  could  go  on,  which  turn  would 
he  take?    For  John  Galsworthy's  work  from  the  beginning 
25  has  been  twofold.    On  the  one  hand,  he  was  a  stern  moralist 
concerned  with  the  injustices  and  cruelties  of  life,  as  all  his 
1  The  New  York  Sun,  August  5,  1915. 
18,  19  :  b,  1.  23,  24 :  b.  25-251,  5  : 1. 
250 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  251 

plays,  excepting  that  soul  adventure  "  The  Little  Dream," 
would  prove.  On  the  other  hand  he  was  a  pure  aesthetic 
impressionist,  culling  the  flush  of  beauty  from  the  fleeting 
moments ;  staying  them  in  a  form  as  lovely  as  their  original 
essence.  Which  was  to  survive,  John  Galsworthy  a  member  5 
of  the  great  band  of  modern  reformers,  or  John  Galsworthy 
the  greatest  literary  impressionist  since  Pater? 

"  The  Little  Man  and  Other  Satires  "  were  clever  but 
rather  obvious  characterizations.     "  A  Bit  o'  Love  "  was 
charming  but  slight.     Our  eyes  were  fixed  for  the  next  10 
major  work  to  show  the  nature  of  the  third  period. 

It  was  especially  important  in  the  case  of  John  Gals- 
worthy because  he  is  a  writer  whom  no  external  destiny 
threatens.  Born  in  Surrey  of  a  father  whose  people  had 
been  established  in  Devon  since  the  Saxon  invasion;  with  15 
a  moor  still  bearing  his  name,  "  Gaulzery  " ;  of  a  mother 
whose  ancestors  had  been  landowners  in  Worcestershire 
at  least  since  the  fifteenth  century,  the  three  loveliest  shires 
of  England  contributed  to  his  aesthetic  perceptions.  More- 
over, John  Galsworthy  entered  the  world  with  all  the  ma-  20 
terial  circumstances  of  life  prearranged.  He  had  good 
blood,  family,  position,  ample  means.  He  went  through 
the  usual  educational  mill.  He  was  all  but  head  boy  at 
Harrow  and  progressed  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  after 
the  usual  manner,  where  he  interested  himself  in  horses,  25 
sport,  fine  raiment,  and  doubtless  his  fellow-man.  His 
sensitive  perceptions  of  social  distinctions,  his  understand- 
ing of  the  fundamental  fineness  of  the  patrician  class,  were 
doubtless  sharpened  in  these  years.  Whether  to  please  him- 
self or  others,  or  merely  to  show  that  he  was  one  of  those  30 
rare  beings  who  do  as  they  please  with  themselves,  he 
dropped  these  university  preoccupations  neatly  and  de- 
cisively in  his  third  year  at  Oxford  and  he  took  an  honors 
5-7:  i.  8-1 1  :b.  14-19  :  x.  21-29  :x,w.  12-252, 14 :  k,  n. 


252  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

degree  in  law.  He  had  chambers  in  the  Temple  and  dis- 
covered that  he  hated  his  profession.  Such  was  his  parents' 
confidence  in  him  and  his  judgment  that  when  he  decided 
that  he  would  rather  travel  than  be  a  barrister  no  obstacles 
5  were  put  in  his  way  and  he  proceeded  to  survey  mankind 
in  New  Zealand,  Australia,  Canada,  the  Fiji  Islands,  Russia, 
France,  Germany,  Austria,  the  United  States,  and  else- 
where. Destiny  dowered  him  with  the  thing  Stevenson 
yearned  for,  an  income :  "  An  income  that  will  come  in ; 

10  instead  of  having  to  go  to  fish  for  It  with  the  immortal 
mind  of  man.  I  mean  an  income  that  would  come  in  all 
of  itself  while  all  Fd  have  to  do  would  be  to  exist  and 
blossom  and  sit  around  on  chairs.  Then  Fd  write  some 
works  that  would  make  your  hair  curl." 

15  This  income  that  left  the  author  free  to  sit  on  chairs 
and  blossom  Galsworthy's  ancestors,  like  those  of  Swin- 
burne and  Shelley,  attended  to  before  his  birth,  and  it  is 
a  profound  lesson  to  those  intending  to  beget  geniuses. 
Geniuses  lose  three-fourths  of  their  vitality  in  dull  dealings 

20  with  impervious  editors,  publishers,  and  the  public.  The 
only  possible  way  to  arrange  to  get  the  best  out  of  a  genius 
is  for  the  prospective  one's  grandfather  to  prearrange  an 
income  that  will  "  come  in  of  itself." 

Whether  it  was  during  his  term  in  the  Temple  or  later, 

25  it  is  quite  evident  that  some  time  in  his  career  John  Gals- 
worthy frequented  police  courts,  and  hence  we  have  not 
only  "  The  Silver  Box "  and  "  Justice,"  but  innumerable 
sketches  in  "  A  Motley "  and  "  A  Commentary."  Like 
Bernard  Shaw  and  like  Wells,  he  was  totally  dissatisfied 

30  with  the  rough-and-ready  justice  of  this  world.     Unlike 

Shaw,  he  did  not  meet  it  with  ridicule  and  scathing  satire; 

like  Wells,  he  did  not  moralize  on  theories;  but  he  pointed 

out  all  the  terrible  waste  and  pity  of  it.    He  is  more  versatile 

1-8  : 1.  15-23  :  w.  28-253,  5 :  u,  o,  n. 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  253 

than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  for  while  he  ranks  with 
Wells  and  Bennett  as  a  novelist  he  surpasses  both  of  them 
as  a  playwright;  and  if  not  so  brilliant  a  playwright  or  so 
mordant  an  essayist  as  Bernard  Shaw,  he  adds  to  both 
these  vocations  that  of  being  also  a  poet.  5 

John  Galsworthy  is  barely  middle-aged.  He  is  midway 
in  the  forties,  although  he  looks  about  thirty,  and  he  has 
given  us  seven  novels  (or  eight,  if  one  choose  to  count  in 
that  lyric  interlude  "The  Dark  Flower"),  four  volumes 
of  essays,  one  of  them  a  volume  of  supreme  beauty;  ten  10 
plays,  and  a  volume  of  lyric  verse. 

It  has  been  said  of  Arnold .  Bennett  that  with  all  his 
genius,  industry,  and  efficiency,  one  feels  in  reading  him 
that  his  upright  spirit  has  yet  been  "  inadequately  tempered 
to  fine  issues."     This  is  precisely  what  is  not  to  be  said  15 
of  John  Galsworthy;  for  wherever  he  touches  upon  life, 
whether  it  be  the  fleeting  aspects  of  nature,  a  chance  en- 
counter with   a  tiny  beggar  maid   in  a  red  petticoat,   an 
antiquated  and  cast-aside  butler,  a  Dutch-French  adven- 
turer and  philosopher  with  his  nose  askew,  or  an  oppressed  20 
and  honest  charwoman,  he  catches  some  half-hidden  gleam 
of  loveliness.    He  sees  in  pictures  and  in  visions  rather  than 
in  things  and  details.     He  can  never  be  wholly  condemna- 
tory of  a  world  and  a  human  nature  which  have  offered 
his  sensitive  eyes  so  many  exquisite  gleams  of  pure  loveli-  25 
ness. 

There  is  one  point  in  which  he  undoubtedly  surpasses 
his  fellow-craftsmen.  He  has  a  sense  for  diction.  This 
is  a  matter  as  unarguable  as  the  existence  of  the  soul. 
Either  you  do  or  you  do  not  like  writers  who  "  sense  "  and  30 
"  glimpse  "  and  "  enthuse."  Either  you  shudder  or  you  do 
not  at  a  writer  who  makes  every  abstract  noun  out  of  an 
adjective  by  adding  "  ness "  to  it.  It  is  sheer  instinct 

6-1 1 :  b.  12-26  :  k,  h  (cf.  in,  14-112,  29),  n.  31-254,  2  :  x. 


254  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

with  some  readers  when  they  see  the  word  "  stableness  " 
to  correct  it  and  say  "  stability."  In  these  matters  Gals- 
worthy's days  at  Harrow  and  Oxford  stand  him  in  good 
stead.  He  is  one  of  those  lucky  mortals  who  have  an 
5  instinctive  feeling  for  the  associational  value  of  words  and 
he  never  makes  your  flesh  crawl  suddenly  in  the  middle  of 
a  beautiful  description.  Neither  Wells  nor  Bennett  is  free 
of  sin  in  this  particular.  Shaw  says :  "  Your  men  who 
really  can  write,  your  Dickenses,  Ruskins,  and  Carlyles, 

10  and  their  like,  are  vernacular  above  all  things :  they  cling 
to  the  locutions  which  everyday  use  has  made  a  part  of 
our  common  life."  But  Shaw  has  not  quite  hit  the  mark 
here.  These  writers,  like  William  and  Henry  James,  first 
served  an  apprenticeship  to  fine  writing  and  well-tempered 

15  purple  patches  and  then  with  adroit  art  they  vivified  the 
page  by  a  cunning  introduction  of  colloquialism  which 
brought  the  reader  surprised  to  his  feet  saying :  "  Here  I 
am  at  home  on  the  ground  after  all,  just  as  I  thought  I 
was  soaring.  Earth  and  air  seem  one  connected  whole." 

20  To  be  "  vernacular "  and  yet  an  artist  requires  the  most 
adroit  skill  and  cunning.  In  the  main  John  Galsworthy  is 
not  colloquial.  Rather  he  is  a  poet  with  a  poet's  sense  for 
the  connotations  of  words. 

In  matter  he  has  covered  a  wide  field  of  English  life. 

25  "  Villa  Rubein,"  his  earliest  real  novel,  is  set  in  a  foreign 
field.  It  is  incoherent  at  times  and  the  characters  fall  short 
of  actuality.  It  was  most  tenderly  treated  by  the  critics 
and  more  praised  than  it  deserved  to  be.  :<  The  Island 
Pharisees  "  made  a  great  stride  forward.  Here  enters  that 

30  inimitable  character  Ferrand,  who  appears  in  sketches  and 
in  "  The  Pigeon  "  and  serves  Mr.  Galsworthy  so  faithfully 
as  a  mouthpiece  of  the  creator's  philosophy  of  life.  The 
country  place,  its  breakfast  table,  its  garden,  its  gardener 

4-19  :  w.  253,  27-254,  23  :  k,  n.  24-32  :  x.  32-255,  6  :  x. 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  255 

who  mourned  too  long  for  his  dead  wife  to  suit  his  mis- 
tress, that  lady  of  the  house  herself,  who  had  breathed  in 
the  sense  of  superiority  of  her  class  in  her  cradle;  her 
daughter  who  lived  so  securely  and  beautifully  on  the  sur- 
faces of  life;  it  is  all  done  to  an  extraordinary  pitch  of  5 
perfection.  There  are  few  instances  in  literature  of  so 
great  a  gap  between  a  first  and  a  second  book.  Hardy 
compassed  as  great  a  gulf  between  "  Desperate  Remedies," 
an  awkward  attempt,  and  "  Under  the  Greenwood  Tree/'  a 
rural  classic.  Galsworthy  knew  his  art,  his  field  of  observa-  10 
tion,  and  had  the  mastery  of  characterization  in  "  Island 
Pharisees."  After  that  he  tried  various  circles  of  society. 
In  "  The  Man  of  Property  "  he  handled  that  solid,  material, 
moneyed  class,  good  at  a  bargain,  with  an  exact  sense  of 
the  value  of  real  estate  and  ownership,  which  plays  so  15 
large  a  part  in  England's  prosperity.  They  are  all  people 
of  limited  perception  and  emotions,  and  yet  somehow  with 
all  their  hidebound  limitations  they  are  rather  lovable,  the 
sort  of  people  that  it  is  no  good  arguing  with  since  they 
have  never  once  conceived  of  revising  their  grandfathers'  20 
morals  and  one  knows  that  there  is  no  opening  where  one 
could  insert  the  wedge  of  a  new  idea. 

:<  The  Country  House "  was  one  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
greatest  successes.  In  parts  it  is  incomparable.  Neither 
Hardy  nor  George  Meredith  has  done  anything  to  excel  in  25 
exquisite  veracity  and  delightful  lightness  of  touch  the 
chapter  entitled  "  Sabbath  at  Worsted  Skeins."  Moreover, 
Mrs.  Pendyce  is  one  of  the  most  appealing  women  Gals- 
worthy has  ever  drawn,  "  a  woman  of  silk  and  steel,"  as 
someone  has  called  her.  Reserved,  self-contained,  abhor-  30 
ring  self-pity;  bearing  with  smiling  fortitude  the  fugitive 
hopes  and  the  emptiness  of  her  earthly  life,  and  reliving 
all  its  lost  youth  and  missed  romance  in  her  son  George. 

6,  7  :  b.  12-22  :  d,  e.  23-27  :  a.  30-256,  4  :  c,  x,  p. 


256  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

A  very  delicately  penciled  portrait,  but  a  very  true  and 
lovely  one,  this  of  Mrs.  Horace  Pendyce.  Horace  himself 
is  a  fine  drawing,  faintly  reminiscent  of  Sir  Willoughby 
Patterne,  not  quite  so  comic  and  rather  more  pathetic. 
5  In  "  Fraternity  "  Mr.  Galsworthy  turned  to  the  well-to- 
do  professional  classes  and  gave  us  a  picture  of 

"  The  loves  that  doubted,  the  loves  that  dissembled, 
That  still  mistrusted  themselves  and  trembled, 
That  drew  back  their  hands  and  would  not  touch." 

10  For  some  reason  this  volume  seems  to  have  less  vitality, 
less  actual  humanity  than  any  other  volume  Mr.  Galsworthy 
has  written.  The  fantastic  figure  of  old  Mr.  Stone,  and  the 
sordid,  common  little  model,  hardly  serve  to  vivify  the 
pages.  Then  came  "  The  Patrician,"  probably  the  finest 

15  novel  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  yet  published.  It  is  understood 
that  Mr.  Galsworthy  feels  himself  that  his  most  biting 
satire,  most  stern  arraignment  of  modern  society  is  con- 
tained in  this  volume.  What  the  critic  feels  is  that  in  this 
volume  he  has  drawn  some  of  the  most  masterly  portraits 

20  in  English  fiction.  If  anything  could  justify  the  security  of 
the  secure  classes,  the  splendid,  self-disciplined,  tolerant, 
high-minded  aristocrats  who  walk  through  the  pages*  of 
"  The  Patrician  "  would  do  so.  To  be  sure  they  have  not 
"  starved,  feasted,  despaired,  been  happy  " ;  they  have  never 

25  thrown  themselves  out  upon  the  breast  of  life  unstayed 
by  its  physical  accessories  and  securities,  but  at  least  they 
have  accepted  a  tradition  and  lived  by  it;  they  have  felt 
the  obligations  of  their  security  and  have  played  the  game 
according  to  the  rules  as  they  understand  them.  "  The 

30  Patrician  "  will  bear  as  many  readings  as  "  One  of  Our 
Conquerors  "  to  extract  all  its  subtle 'essences. 

"  The  Inn  of  Tranquillity "  is  fairly  steeped  in  beauty 

18-31  :  w,  e,  c>x,  n. 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  257 

and  profound  reflection.  These  essays  will  serve  and  rank 
high  in  English  literature.  "  The  Novelist's  Allegory/' 
the  "Vague  Thoughts  on  Art,"  "Wind  in  the  Rocks," 
"  Memories,"  and  "  Three  Gleams  "  are  jewels  of  thought 
and  form.  One  must  point  out  here  Mr.  Galsworthy's  5 
noteworthy  love  of  animals.  "  Memories  "  is  a  eulogy  of 
a  dead  dog,  exquisitely  written.  Nor  should  one  forget 
the  "  dear  dogs  "  and  the  spaniel  John  in  "  The  Country 
House  " ;  or  certain  horses  so  vividly  seen  and  described  in 
"  The  Patrician  "  and  "  Island  Pharisees  "  that  they  claim  10 
almost  the  attention  of  a  human  character. 

'  The  Dark  Flower "  was,  in  the  first  place,  a  new 
genre,  and  in  the  second  place  it  unfortunately  roused  a 
stupid  question  as  to  morality.  It  is  difficult  to  understand 
how  the  question  arose.  Perhaps  it  was  a  mere  question  15 
of  the  book's  fitness  for  children  and  foolish  women,  or 
more  likely  the  half-educated  classes  still  cannot  distinguish 
between  the  letter  and  the  spirit  of  the  law  of  love.  Baldly, 
the  book  consists  of  three  sketches  in  a  man's  life:  one, 
entitled  "  Spring,"  describes  very  beautifully  the  half-  20 
conscious,  somnolent  awakening  to  love  of  a  lad  of  nineteen, 
who  is  adored  by  an  older  woman  of  foreign  birth.  She 
is  no  conscienceless  schemer,  and  seeing  the  boy's  senses 
inclined  really  to  awaken  by  means  of  a  perfectly  normal 
affection  for  his  little  cousin,  she  escapes.  The  second  part,  25 
and  incomparably  the  most  beautiful,  describes  the  first 
full-blown  passion  of  a  man's  maturity.  It  is  a  wonder- 
fully delicate  handling  of  passion. 

The  third  sketch,  "  Autumn,"  sees  the  same  hero,  middle- 
aged,  successful,  a  great  sculptor;  somewhat  deadened  by  30 
the  peaceful,  uninterrupted  domesticity  of  his  home  life, 
and  almost  but  not  quite  his  youth  is  revived  by  the  adoring 
worship  of  a  beautiful  girl.    This  time  he  escapes,  first  by 

12-28  :  w,  j,  m.  29-258,  10  :  j,  m. 


258  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

confessing  his  danger  to  his  wife  and  then  also  by  fleeing 
temptation.  There  is  not  a  single  gross  word  or  concep- 
tion. The  whole  discussion  of  morality  in  connection  with 
the  book  was  beside  the  mark.  The  one  question  is,  whether 

5  a  prose  form  can  afford  to  hold  so  exalted  a  level  through 
an  entire  book.  Keats  might  do  this  in  "  Hyperion,"  or 
Shelley  in  "  Alastor " ;  but  was  it  a  legitimate  proceeding 
in  prose  ?  This  is  the  only  question  as  to  "  The  Dark 
Flower."  The  entire  spirit  is  so  exalted  that  no  question 

10  of  morals  enters  in. 

"  The  Freelands  "  is  the  first  major  work  of  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy since  the  two  beautiful  volumes  of  1913.  The  story 
baldly  stated  is  that  of  a  working  man,  Bob  Tryst,  on  a 
large  English  estate.  His  wife  is  dead  and  he  is  left  with 

15  three  little  children.  His  deceased  wife's  sister  lives  with 
him  and  takes  care  of  the  little  ones.  Tryst  and  his  sister- 
in-law  are  to  be  married,  when  the  owner  of  the  estate, 
Malloring,  and  his  wife,  who  are  of  the  High  Church  "  per- 
suasion," decide  that  they  must  prevent  the  marriage  on 

20  account  of  the  church's  attitude  toward  the  marriage  of  a 
deceased  wife's  sister.  In  the  near  neighborhood  of  the 
Mallorings  lives  Morton  Freeland,  one  of  the  five  well-to-do 
and  influential  brothers  representing  the  professional  and 
property-holding  classes.  Morton  Freeland  has  married  a 

25  woman  who  is  a  social  revolutionist,  and  both  his  son  and 
daughter  are  implicated  in  movements  of  social  reform. 
The  whole  wide  social  fabric  of  the  book  is  interwoven 
with  Bob  Tryst's  tragedy.  Bob,  in  revenge  for  being  turned 
off  the  estate  and  out  of  the  cottage  where  he  had  spent 

30  his  life,  fires  the  Mallorings'  hayricks.     He  is  imprisoned, 

tried,  sentenced  to  three  years  penal  servitude.     Bob  had 

lived  his  whole  life  in  the  open  under  the  stretch  of  sky. 

The  outlook  was  too  much  for  him  and  he  committed  sui- 

11-259, 4  =  5,  v. 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  259 

cide.  Into  this  little  human  tragedy  in  a  Worcestershire 
estate  are  drawn  innumerable  people,  young  lovers,  profes- 
sional men,  justices,  landowners,  the  entire  organization 
of  a  capitalistic  society : 

"  In  reality  the  issue  involved  in  that  tiny  episode  con-  5 
cerned  human  existence  to  its  depths,  for  what  was  it  but 
the  simple,  all-important  question  of  human  freedom?    The 
simple,  all-important  issue  of  how  far  men  and  women 
should  try  to  rule  the  lives  of  others  instead  of  trying  only 
to  rule  their  own,  and  how  far  those  others  should  allow  10 
their  lives  to  be  so  ruled?     This  it  was  which  gave  that 
episode  its  power  of  attracting  and  affecting  the  thoughts, 
feelings,  actions  of  so  many  people  otherwise  remote.  .   .   . 
The  mess  was  caused  by  the  fight  best  of  all  worth  fighting, 
of  democracy  against  autocracy,  of  a  man's  right  to  do  as  15 
he  likes  with  his  life  if  he  harms  not  others ;  of  '  the  Land  * 
against  the  fetters  of  '  the  Land/  '; 

This  is  the  economic  crux  round  which  the  novel  turns. 
The  canvas  of  "  The  Freelands  "  is  a  broad  one.     Char- 
acters from  all  levels  of  life,  the  peasant,  the  professions,  20 
the  capitalists,  are  all  living  and  moving  in  the  picture. 
There  is  the  very  beautiful  and  exquisite  young  love  story 
of  Derek  and  Nedda.    Among  the  portraits  in  the  book  that 
of  Frances  Freeland,  the  mother  of  five  grown  sons  and 
grandmother  of  Nedda,  stands  out  for  its  detailed  and  loving  25 
observation.     She  first  appears  on  the  lawn  of  her  son's 
house : 

"  Under  the  shade  of  a  copper  beech,  just  where  the  drive 
cut  through  into  its  circle  before  the  house,  an  old  lady  was 
sitting  that  afternoon  on  a  camp  stool.  She  was  dressed  30 
in  gray  alpaca,  light  and  cool,  and  on  her  iron-gray  hair  a 
piece  of  black  lace.  A  number  of  Hearth  and  Home  and 
a  little  pair  of  scissors,  suspended  by  an  inexpensive  chain 
from  her  waist,  rested  on  her  knee,  for  she  had  been  mean- 

18-27  :  a,  h,  o. 


260  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

ing  to  cut  out  for  dear  Felix  a  certain  recipe  for  keeping 
the  head  cool ;  but  as  a  fact  she  sat  without  doing  so,  very 
still,  save  that  now  and  then  she  compressed  her  pale,  fine 
lips  and  continually  moved  her  pale,  fine  hands.  She  was 
5  evidently  waiting  for  something  that  promised  excitement, 
even  pleasure,  for  a  little  rose-leaf  flush  had  quavered  up 
into  a  face  that  was  colored  like  parchment;  and  her  gray 
eyes  under  regular,  still  dark  brows,  very  far  apart,  between 
which  there  was  no  semblance  of  a  wrinkle,  seemed  noting 
10  little  definite  things  about  her  almost  unwillingly,  as  an 
Arab's  or  a  Red  Indian's  eyes  will  continue  to  note  things 
in  the  present,  however  much  their  minds  may  be  set  on 
the  future." 

The  portrait  of  Frances   Freeland,   with  her  Victorian 

15  talent  for  shutting  her  eyes  tight  and  ignoring  whatever 
might  be  puzzling  or  painful  in  life,  is  touchingly  tender 
and  sadly  truthful.  For  it  is  to  be  feared  that  a  great 
many  of  our  grandmothers  coped  with  this  world's  evil 
by  ignoring  it.  Her  philosophy  of  life  was  made  up  largely 

20  of  a  fine  fortitude  which  accepted  as  the  chief  obligations 
of  life  the  making  the  best  of  a  hopelessly  bad  job  and  the 
submission  to  authority.  She  had  implicitly  obeyed  her 
husband  while  he  lived  and  she  now  counseled  her  family 
to  obey  her  eldest  son,  John. 

25  "  I  don't  understand  very  well,"  she  would  say,  for  our 
grandmothers  did  not  concern  themselves  much  with  social 
problems,  "  but  I  am  sure  that  whatever  dear  John  says 
will  be  wise  and  right.  You  must  remember  that  he  is  the 
eldest  and  has  had  a  great  deal  of  experience."  And  again 

30  she  sums  up  life  and  all  its  problems  by  saying :  "  It's  always 
best  to  smile  and  try  to  look  on  the  bright  side  of  things 
and  not  be  grumbly-grumbly." 

Frances  Freeland  is  a  lovely  memorial  to  the  loveliest 
kind  of  mid- Victorian  woman  whose  virtues  will  no  more 
14-24  :  v.  14-19  :  x.  32-261,  2  : 1.  260,  33-261,  7  :  *,  w. 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY  261 

answer  for  a  world  that  demands  of  its  women  intellect, 
courage,  wide  outlook,  and  independence.  "  Tempora 
mutantur,"  and  the  old  type  with  all  its  loveliness  and  gen- 
tleness must  pass  and  a  virtue  more  vigorous  take  its  place. 
Young  Nedda  in  "  The  Freelands  "  is  a  good  instance  of  5 
the  transition  type.  The  Victorian  inheritance  makes  her 
lovely,  but  life  and  love  make  her  brave. 

In  this  novel  John  Galsworthy  has  lost  none  of  his  cun- 
ning. The  book  is  full  of  fleeting  glimpses  of  the  passing 
loveliness  of  life;  pictures  of  man,  silent,  dumb,  puzzled,  10 
set  in  his  beautiful  earth;  the  shifting  mystery  of  sky  and 
cloud  shadow  above  him ;  the  endless  mystery  of  earth  green 
carpeted  and  tree  bedecked  about  him;  this  is  as  wonder- 
fully placed  before  us  as  in  "  The  Dark  Flower."  But  in 
this  book  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  married  to  his  natural  magic  15 
all  the  seriousness  and  chivalry  of  his  social  purposes.  The 
book  ends  on  the  note  of  hope.  The  world  is  changing! 
There  shall  not  be  a  lost  good.  Each  man  who  rights  for 
freedom  and  for  the  loosening  of  the  shackles  of  the  op- 
pressed does  something  toward  that  change.  20 

Like  Heine  of  old,  like  his  living  confreres  Hardy  and 
Shaw  and  Wells,  Galsworthy  is  a  brave  soldier  in  the  libera- 
tion war  of  humanity. 

8-20  :  c,  a,  h,  n.  21-23  '  n. 
7,9,  n,  12,  13,  14. 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  * 

IN  these  days  of  academic  self-analysis,  the  intellectual 
caliber  of  the  American  undergraduate  finds  few  admirers 
or  defenders.  Professors  speak  resignedly  of  the  poverty 
of  his  background  and  imagination.  Even  the  under- 
5  graduate  himself  in  college  editorials  confesses  that  the 
student  soul  vibrates  reluctantly  to  the  larger  intellectual 
and  social  issues  of  the  day.  The  absorption  in  petty  gossip, 
sports,  class  politics,  fraternity  life,  suggests  that  too  many 
undergraduates  regard  their  college  in  the  light  of  a  glorified 
10  preparatory  school  where  the  activities  of  their  boyhood 
may  be  worked  out  on  a  grandiose  scale.  They  do  not  act 
as  if  they  thought  of  the  college  as  a  new  intellectual  society 
in  which  one  acquired  certain  rather  definite  scientific  and 
professional  attitudes,  and  learned  new  interpretations 
15  which  threw  experience  and  information  into  new  terms 
and  new  lights.  The  average  undergraduate  tends  to  meet 
studies  like  philosophy,  psychology,  economics,  general  his- 
tory, with  a  frankly  puzzled  wonder.  A  whole  new  world 
seems  to  dawn  upon  him,  in  its  setting  and  vocabulary  alien 
20  to  anything  in  his  previous  life.  Every  teacher  knows  this 
baffling  resistance  of  the  undergraduate  mind. 

It  is  not  so  much  that  the  student  resists  facts  and  details. 
He  will  absorb  trusts  and  labor  unions,   municipal  gov- 
ernment   and    direct    primaries,    the    poems    of    Matthew 
25  Arnold,  and  James's  theory  of  the  emotions.     There  is  no 
unkindliness  of  his  mind  towards  fairly  concrete  material. 
1  Editorial  in  The  New  Republic,  September  25,  1915. 
1-4 :  b.  7-16  :  b.  18-21  :  b  (cf.  1-4).  1-21  :  k.  22-263,  12  :  v,j. 
262 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  263 

What  he  is  more  or  less  impervious  to  is  points-of-view, 
interpretations.  He  seems  to  lack  philosophy.  The  college 
has  to  let  too  many  undergraduates  pass  out  into  profes- 
sional and  business  life,  not  only  without  the  germ  of  a 
philosophy,  but  without  any  desire  for  an  interpretative  5 
clew  through  the  maze.  In  this  respect  the  American  un- 
dergraduate presents  a  distinct  contrast  to  the  European. 
For  the  latter  does  seem  to  get  a  certain  intellectual  setting 
for  his  ideas  which  makes  him  intelligible,  and  gives  jour- 
nalism and  the  ordinary  expression  of  life  a  certain  tang  10 
which  we  lack  here.  Few  of  our  undergraduates  get  from 
the  college  any  such  intellectual  impress. 

The  explanation  is  probably  not  that  the  student  has  no 
philosophy,  but  that  he  comes  to  college  with  an  uncon- 
scious philosophy  so  tenacious  that  the  four  years  of  the  15 
college  in  its  present  technique  can  do  little  to  disintegrate 
it.  The  cultural  background  of  the  well-to-do  American 
home  with  its  "  nice  "  people,  its  sentimental  fiction  and 
popular  music,  its  amiable  religiosity  and  vague  moral  op- 
timism, is  far  more  alien  to  the  stern  secular  realism  of  20 
modern  university  teaching  than  most  people  are  willing 
to  admit.  The  college  world  would  find  itself  less  frus- 
trated by  the  undergraduate's  secret  hostility  if  it  would 
more  frankly  recognize  what  a  challenge  its  own  attitudes 
are  to  our  homely  American  ways  of  thinking  and  feeling.  25 
Since  the  college  has  not  felt  this  dramatic  contrast,  or 
at  least  has  not  felt  a  holy  mission  to  assail  our  American 
mushiness  of  thought  through  the  undergraduate,  it  has 
rather  let  the  latter  run  away  with  the  college. 

It  is  a  trite  complaint  that  the  undergraduate  takes  his  30 

extra-curricular  activities  more  seriously  than  his  studies. 

But  he  does  this  because  his  homely  latent  philosophy  is 

essentially   a    sporting    philosophy,    the    good    old    Anglo- 

2 :  b.  13-29  :  k,  j,  w.  30-264,  20 :  k,  d. 


264  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

Saxon  conviction  that  life  is  essentially  a  game  whose  sig- 
nificance lies  in  terms  of  winning  or  losing.  The  passion 
of  the  American  undergraduate  for  intercollegiate  athletics 
is  merely  a  symbol  of  a  general  interpretation  for  all  the 
5  activities  that  come  to  his  attention.  If  he  is  interested  in 
politics,  it  is  in  election  campaigns,  in  the  contests  of  par- 
ties and  personalities.  His  parades  and  cheerings  are  the 
encouragement  of  a  racer  for  the  goal.  After  election,  his 
enthusiasm  collapses.  His  spiritual  energy  goes  into  class 

10  politics,  fraternity  and  club  emulation,  athletics,  every  activ- 
ity which  is  translatable  into  terms  of  winning  and  losing. 
In  Continental  universities  this  energy  would  go  rather  into 
a  turbulence  for  causes  and  ideas,  a  militant  radicalism  or 
even  a  more  militant  conservatism  that  would  send  Paris 

15  students  out  into  the  streets  with  a  "  Cail-laux  as-sas-sin !  " 
or  tie  up  an  Italian  town  for  the  sake  of  Italia  Irredenta. 
Even  the  war,  though  it  has  called  out  a  fund  of  anti- 
militarist  sentiment  in  the  American  colleges,  still  tends  to 
be  spoken  of  in  terms  of  an  international  sporting  event. 

20  "  Who  will  win  ?  "  is  the  question  here. 

Now  this  sporting  philosophy  by  which  the  American 
undergraduate  lives,  and  which  he  seems  to  bring  with  him 
from  his  home,  may  be  a  very  good  philosophy  for  an 
American.  It  is  of  the  same  stuff  with  our  good- 

25  humored  contempt  for  introspection,  our  dread  of  the 
"  morbid,"  our  dislike  of  conflicting  issues  and  insoluble 
problems.  The  sporting  attitude  is  a  grateful  and  easy  one. 
Issues  are  decided  cleanly.  No  irritating  fringes  are  left 
over.  The  game  is  won  or  lost.  Analysis  and  speculation 

30  seem  superfluous.     The  point  is  that  such  a  philosophy  is 
as  different  as  possible  from  that  which  motivates  the  intel- 
lectual world  of  the  modern  college,  with  its  .searchings, 
its  hypotheses  and  interpretations  and  revisions,  its  flexi- 
8,  9  :  b.  9-16  :  h.  20  :  b.  24-30 :  b,  c.  31 : 1. 


THE  UNDERGRADUATE  265 

bility  and  openness  of  mind.  In  the  scientific  world  of  the 
instructor,  things  are  not  won  or  lost.  His  attitude  is  not 
a  sporting  one. 

Yet  the  college  has  allowed  some  of  these  sporting  atti- 
tudes to  be  imposed  upon  it.     The  undergraduates'  gladi-  5 
atorial  contests  proceed  under  faculty  supervision  and  pat- 
ronage.    Alumni  contribute  their  support  to  screwing  up 
athletic  competition  to  the  highest  semi-professional  pitch. 
They  lend  their  hallowing  patronage  to  fraternity  life  and 
other  college  institutions  which  tend  to  emphasize  social  10 
distinction.     And  the  college  administration,  in  contrast  to 
the  European  scheme,  has  turned  the  college  course  into  a 
sort  of  race  with  a  prize  at  the  goal.    The  degree  has  be- 
come a  sort  of  honorific  badge  for  all  classes  of  society, 
and  the  colleges  have  been  forced  to  give  it  this  quasi-  15 
athletic  setting  and  fix  the  elaborate  rules  of  the  game  by 
which  it  may  be  won — rules  which  shall  be  easy  enough 
to  get  all  classes  competing  for  it,  and  hard  enough  to 
make  it  a  sufficient  prize  to  keep  them  all  in  the  race.    An 
intricate  system  of  points  and  courses  and  examinations  20 
sets  the  student  working  for  marks  and  the  completion  of 
schedules  rather  than  for  a  new  orientation  in  important 
fields  of  human  interest. 

The  undergraduate  can  scarcely  be  blamed  for  responding 
to  a  system  which  so  strongly  resembles  his  sports,  or  for  25 
bending  his  energies  to  playing  the  game  right,  rather  than 
assimilating  the  intellectual  background  of  his  teachers.    So 
strongly  has  this  sporting  technique  been  acquired  by  the 
college  that  even  when  the  undergraduate  lacks  the  sport- 
ing instinct  and  does  become  interested  in  ideas,  he  is  apt  30 
to  find  that  he  has  only  drawn  attention  to  his  own  pre- 
cocity and  won  amused  notice  rather  than  respect.    In  spite 
of  the  desire  of  instructors  to  get  themselves  over  to  their 

4-23  :  k,  a,  n.  24-266,  13  :  d,  v. 


266  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

students,  in  spite  of  a  real  effort  to  break  down  the  "  class- 
consciousness  "  of  teacher  and  student,  the  gulf  between 
their  attitudes  is  too  fundamental  to  be  easily  bridged. 
Unless  it  is  bridged,  however,  the  undergraduate  is  left 

5  in  a  sort  of  Peter  Pan  condition,  looking  back  to  his  school- 
boy life  and  carrying  along  his  schoolboy  interests  with 
him,  instead  of  anticipating  his  graduate  or  professional 
study  or  his  active  life.  What  should  be  an  introduction 
to  professional  or  business  life  in  a  world  of  urgent  political 

10  and  social  issues,  and  the  acquiring  of  intellectual  tools 
with  which  to  meet  their  demands,  becomes  a  sort  of  se- 
questered retreat  out  of  which  to  jump  from  boyhood  into 
a  badly-prepared  middle  age. 

The  college  will  not  really  get  the  undergraduate  until  it 

15  becomes  more  conscious  of  the  contrast  of  its  own  phi- 
losophy with  his  sporting  philosophy,  and  tackles  his  boyish 
Americanisms  less  mercifully,  or  until  it  makes  college  life 
less  like  that  of  an  undergraduate  country  club,  and  more 
of  an  intellectual  workshop  where  men  and  women  in  the 

20  fire  of  their  youth,  with  conflicts  and  idealisms,  questions 
and  ambitions  and  desire  for  expression,  come  to  serve  an 
apprenticeship  under  the  masters  of  the  time. 

14-22  :  d,  c,  x,  n. 
i,  2,  3,  4,  S,  6. 


GRANT  SHOWERMAN 

1870- 
TH  E  GREAT  VOCATION  x 

INSISTENCE  on  the  practical  in  education  is  one  of  the 
no  new  things  under  the  sun. 

"  When  went  there  by  an  age,  since  the  great  flood," 

without  its  wiseacres  of  the  cross-roads  and  the  market 
unable  to  see  the  good  in  this  or  that  study,  without  its  5 
self-made  men  to  point  with  pride  to  their  own  manu- 
facture as  a  satisfactory  proof  that  book-learning  was  futile, 
without  its  half-educated  prophets  to  encourage  the  unen- 
lightened discontent  of  pupil  and  parent? 

Fortunately  for  both  the  intellectual  and  practical  affairs  10 
of   the  world,   however,    educational   matters   have  never 
been  for  any  length  of  time  wholly  in  the  control  of  either 
the   wiseacres   or   the   self-made   man   or   the   educational 
demagogue.     At  really  crucial  moments,  these  personages 
have   usually   been  inspired   with   the  good   sense,   if   not  15 
to  leave  educational  policy  to  intellectual  experts,  at  least 
themselves  to  act  under  expert  guidance.     Society  on  the 
whole  has  submitted  itself,  in  intellectual  matters,  to  intel- 
lectual leadership. 

With  the  advance  of  democracy,  there  has  been  in  this  20 
respect  a  tendency  to  change.    The  emphasis  upon  the  peo- 
ple's right  to  be  educated,  and  upon  government's  duty  and 
1  Editorial  in  The  Dial,  September  30,  1915. 
10-19  :  d.  20-268,  23  :  k,  c,  e. 
267 


268  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

privilege  to  educate  them,  has  had  effects  both  bad  and 

good.     Among  the  good,  especially  in  the  United  States, 

have  been   the   dissemination   of   educational   opportunity 

.  and    the   elevation   of    the    popular    level    of    intelligence. 

5  Among  the  bad  has  been  the  tendency  toward  popular  con- 
trol of  educational  ideals  and  educational  policy.  Govern- 
ment has  been  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the 
people;  and  education,  too,  the  gift  and  the  instrument  of 
government,  has  tended  to  be  of  the  people,  by  the  people, 

10  and  for  the  people.  The  dissemination  of  popular  educa- 
tional opportunity  and  the  elevation  of  the  level  of  popular 
intelligence  have  been  accompanied  by  a  restriction  of  ex- 
pert opportunity  and  a  lowering  of  the  level  of  expert  intelli- 
gence. Great  numbers  of  the  people  are  ambitious  to 

15  acquire  the  knowledge  so  easily  accessible,  but  only  because 
knowledge  is  a  useful  instrument  in  practical  affairs.  Com- 
paratively few  conceive  of  it  as  a  source  of  growth  into 
full  stature  rather  than  an  instrument.  Fewer  still  are 
born  again,  into  the  Kingdom  of  the  Intellectual,  to  realize 

20  the  significance  of  the  higher  life  of  the  mind  both  to  the 
individual  and  to  society.  The  majority  principle  is  pre- 
vailing in  educational  sentiment  as  well  as  at  the  polls,  and 
the  great  numbers  are  having  their  way. 

Among   the   manifestations   of    this   popular   control   of 

25  ideals  and  policy,  none  is  more  noticeable  than  the  recent 
and  growing  demand  for  vocational  training.  This,  too, 
is  no  new  thing  under  the  sun.  There  has  always  been  a 
demand  for  vocational  training — a  just  and  necessary  de- 
mand; and  the  demand  has  usually  met  with  some  manner 

30  ©f  response.  Expert  professional  men  and  craftsmen  pro- 
mote the  general  welfare,  and  it  is  the  interest  as  well  as 
the  duty  of  society  to  encourage  expertness  in  some  sub- 
stantial way.  In  major  degree,  the  response  is  to  be  seen 

16-269,  I5'-S- 


GRANT  SHOWERMAN  269 

in  the  elaborate  European  systems  of  technical  schools.  In 
minor  degree,  it  is  to  be  seen  in  the  much  less  extensive  and 
effective  provison  of  America. 

There  is,  nevertheless,  something  new  in  regard  to  voca- 
tional training.  It  is  to  be  observed  especially  in  the  United  5 
States.  This  new  thing  is,  not  the  establishment  of  voca- 
tional courses  or  schools,  but  the  establishment  of  them  at 
the  expense  of  the  general  intellectual  ideal.  If  the  Euro- 
pean countries  are  allowing  the  "  vocationalizing "  of 
gymnasium,  lycee,  or  college,  it  is  at  most  in  very  slight  10 
degree.  Europe  has  met  the  demand  for  technical  instruc- 
tion by  reaching  down  into  its  pocket  and  equipping  real 
technical  schools,  separate  and  efficient,  preserving  intact 
the  institutions  that  have  so  long  stood  for  the  higher  intel- 
lectual life.  The  United  States,  realizing  the  need,  but  15 
lacking  the  Old  World's  courage  and  enlightenment,  is  rob- 
bing her  high  schools  and  colleges  to  satisfy  the  popular 
demand  for  the  vocational,  with  the  result  that  not  only 
is  vocational  training  provided  only  in  form,  but  that 
higher  education  is  preserved  only  in  form.  The  college  20 
of  liberal  arts  in  the  university  is  already  in  great 
part  professionalized,  and  the  high  school  is  fast  becoming 
vocationalized,  in  spirit  if  not  in  actual  fact.  Liberal  edu- 
cation in  the  college,  except  as  it  is  accidental  to  professional 
preparation,  is  threatened  with  extinction;  and  liberal  edu-  25 
cation  in  the  State  institutions  in  general,  both  secondary 
and  higher,  is  in  so  serious  a  condition  of  discouragement 
that  its  friends  are  already  looking  for  salvation  to  the  rise 
of  institutions  unprejudiced  by  popular  control. 

To  be  more  concrete :  we  have  heard  a  great  deal  of  late  30 
about  the  high  school  as  the  "  people's  college,"  and  of  its 
duty  to  prepare  the  people's  sons  and  daughters  for  "  life." 
Those  who  are  of  this  mind  are  thinking  of  "  life  "  in  vo- 

4,  S:b.  4-29  :k,  v.  30-270,  20 :  g. 


270  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

cational  terms,  as  the  earning  of  a  livelihood  in  some  trade, 
business,  or  profession.  If  a  girl  wishes  to  be  a  stenog- 
rapher or  bookkeeper,  if  a  boy  intends  to  follow  a  clerical 
or  mechanical  calling,  the  public  school,  according  to  the 
5  vocational  enthusiast,  should  prepare  them  to  make  an  easy 
and  more  or  less  direct  transition  from  the  school-room  to 
their  chosen  occupations.  Literature,  music,  language, 
algebra,  history,  and  all  studies  and  parts  of  studies  which 
do  not  contribute  directly  and  immediately  to  this  purpose, 

10  are  not  "  vital,"  and  are  to  be  regarded  as  mere  accomplish- 
ments, if  not  as  a  pure  waste  of  the  pupil's  time  and  the 
people's  money. 

This  is  easy  logic,  as  is  all  logic  based  on  imperfect  un- 
derstanding. The  friends  of  liberal  education,  or  general 

15  culture,  or  pure  learning,  or  whatever  we  choose  to  call  the 
education  that  is  accused  of  not  preparing  for  "  life,"  are 
able  to  see  the  vocational  argument,  but  their  vision  does 
not  find  there  the  limit  of  its  range. 

In  the  first  place,  vocational  training  worthy  of  the  name 

20  in  the  high  school  is  practically  impossible.  Actual  count 
would  demonstrate  that  the  number  of  vocational  subjects 
in  which  courses  could  be  devised  is  so  great  that  provision 
for  school  instruction  in  even  a  fraction  of  them  would 
require  an  outlay  in  buildings,  apparatus,  and  teachers  far 

25  greater  than  that  more  or  less  grudgingly  furnished  for  the 
present  comparatively  simple  programme. 

Further,  with  the  most  generous  provision,  some  voca- 
tions considered  important  by  many  a  pupil  and  parent 
would  still  remain  unrepresented.  Why  the  privilege  of 

30  free  instruction  in  carpentering  and  accounting,  and  not 
in  barbering  and  shoemaking,  plumbing  and  manicuring? 
Logically  and  practically,  complete  satisfaction  would  be 
impossible. 

19-33  :  k,  v.  269,  4-270,  33  :  k,  v  (cf.  215,  27-216,  29). 


GRANT  SHOWERMAN  271 

Until,  therefore,  the  State  shall  have  secured  the  moral 
and  financial  support  necessary  to  the  institution  of  large 
numbers  of  technical  courses  and  schools,  it  will  have  to 
limit  its  instruction  to  such  vocations  as  come  the  nearest 
to  being  common  to  all  the  pupils  and  to  the  State  itself.  5 

Of  the  absolutely  universal  vocation,  there  is  one  exam- 
ple, and  only  one.  This  is  the  GREAT  VOCATION — the  voca- 
tion Of  ENLIGHTENED  CITIZENSHIP. 

The  phrase  may  not  be  in  common  use,  and  the  idea 
may  not  be  clearly  formulated  in  the  citizen  mind,  but  the  10 
educational   policy   of   the   State   has   nevertheless   always 
been  based  on  the  principle.    Nine-tenths  of  what  is  taught 
in  both  grades  and  high  school  is  not  really  necessary  to 
the  earning  of  a  livelihood.    The  great  mass  of  instruction 
in  the  college  of  liberal  arts  has  always  been  of  the  same  15 
sort.    When  the  State  has  felt  itself  able,  it  has  established 
technical  and  professional  schools  for  training  in  such  voca- 
tions as  it  regarded  most  important  to  itself — the  highly 
specialized  instruments  of  the  general  welfare :  law,  medi- 
cine, teaching,  agriculture,  engineering.     Yet  it  has  never  20 
until  recently  substituted  the  narrowly  vocational  for  the 
broad  and  fundamental.    It  has  only  added  it.    It  has  recog- 
nized that  the  non-vocational  is  the  great  foundation — that 
the  best  lawyers,  the  best  physicians,  the  best  teachers,  the 
best  agriculturists,  the  best  engineers,  are  those  whose  first  25 
vocation  is  enlightened  citizenship.    It  would  have  done  the 
same  by  religion,  but  for  the  conviction  that  other  means 
were  better. 

The  training  that  leads  to  enlightened  citizenship  is  not 
vocational  in  the  narrow  sense.  What  the  vocational  en-  30 
thusiast  is  mainly  and  frankly  thinking  of,  the  preparation 
of  the  pupil  for  the  earning  of  a  living,  is  more  or  less 
narrow,  selfish,  and  uncivic.  It  is  in  spirit  an  insistence 
1-8 :  b.  9-28 :  v  (cf.  146, 18-147,  6)« 


272  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

upon  the  rights  of  the  individual  at  the  expense  of  the 
State.  The  training  for  the  vocation  of  enlightened  citizen- 
ship, on  the  contrary,  is  in  spirit  an  insistence  on  the  rights 
of  the  State.  Under  ideal  conditions,  too,  the  pleasure  of 

5  the  individual,  despite  the  time  cost  of  liberal  education, 
coincides  with  the  pleasure  of  the  State;  though  under 
actual  conditions  no  small  number  of  pupils,  anxious  for 
quick  and  showy  returns  and  a  speedy  entrance  upon  "  life," 
regard  themselves  as  victims  to  a  perverse  educational  re- 

10  quirement  if  they  are  compelled  to  study  anything  which 
in  their  judgment  is  not  "  vital.'* 

The  immediate  design  of  liberal  education  is  not  skill  of 
hand  or  knowledge  of  technical  detail,  but  the  cultivation 
of  mental  power,  the  broadening  of  vision,  the  deepening  of 

15  perception,  the  refinement  of  intellectual  and  spiritual 
temper.  Its  ultimate  end  is  the  production  of  the  ideal 
citizen  and  of  the  ideal  State. 

Compared  with  the  vocation  of  enlightened  citizenship, 
all  other  vocations  are  special.  They  are  not  separate  from 

20  it,  however.  Unless  founded  upon  it,  they  are  comparatively 
unprofitable,  whether  to  the  individual  or  the  community, 
and  may  indeed  easily  become  a  source  of  harm.  Enlight- 
ened citizenship  is  the  broad  and  firm  foundation,  the 
special  vocation  is  the  superstructure.  Narrow  and  infirm 

25  foundations  will  not  support  strong  and  useful  buildings. 
We  have  too  many  typewriters  and  printers  and  proof- 
readers who  cannot  be  trusted  with  spelling,  punctuation, 
and  composition,  to  say  nothing  of  other  matters  involving 
ordinary  intellectual  expertness.  We  have  too  many  re- 

30  porters,    editors,    magazine    contributors,    and    authors    of 

books,  who  write  ignorant  and  slipshod  English,  and  think 

as  loosely  and  unprofitably  as  they  write.    The  press  goes 

a  long  way  toward  undoing  the  work  of  the  school.    We 

18-273,  J3 :  c>  f>  n> k  (cf-  223,  5-27). 


GRANT  SHOWERMAN  273 

have  too  many  teachers  of  thin  and  narrow  quality;  too 
many  preachers  whose  intellectual  deficiencies  are  such  as 
to  neutralize  the  effect  of  earnest  and  self-sacrificing  char- 
acter; too  many  lawyers  who  took  the  short  cut  to  a  pro- 
fessional career,  and  are  uncultivated  and  slovenly  in  5 
thought,  speech,  and  intellectual  habit ;  too  many  physicians 
whose  growth  is  stunted  because  their  intellectual  roots 
were  not  set  deep  enough.  In  all  these  and  other  profes- 
sions, the  fullness  of  power  that  marks  the  master- 
personality  has  not  been  attainable  because*  of  deficiency  10 
in  general  cultivation.  The  immediate  object  of  the  indi- 
vidual has  been  realized,  but  at  the  expense  of  the  potential 
total ;  the  good  enough  has  been  the  enemy  of  the  best. 

The   same   is    true   of   less  professional   walks   of   life. 
There  are  too  many  culture  club  people  and  platform  lee-  15 
turers  with  superficial  and  catchy  accomplishments  instead 
of  real  depth ;  too  many  playwrights,  actors,  managers,  and 
theater-goers  who  are  not  only  untouched  by  the  great 
dramatic  ideals  of  past  and  present,  but  are  barbarians,  and 
worse  than  barbarians,  in  taste.    There  are  too  many  of  the  20 
rich  who  neither  possess  nor  know  the  value  of  intellectual 
and  spiritual  wealth,  and  are  unable  even  to  recognize  it 
when  it  is  placed  before  them.    There  are  too  many  of  the 
leisured  who  are  unacquainted  with  the  most  gratifying  and 
profitable  means  of  pleasure,  as  well  as  the  most  inoffensive  25 
and  noble.    We  have  too  many  voters  who  know  only  how 
to  mark  a  ballot,  who  cannot  estimate  the  worth  of  men 
and  measures,  who  cannot  think  without  the  giant  head- 
line and  the  screaming  editorial.    We  have  too  many  social 
and  political  reformers  whose  chief  qualification  is  a  "  heart  30 
in  the  right  place,"  who  read  loosely,  think  loosely,  write 
loosely,  and  legislate  as  if  the  making  of  law  were  an  inven- 
tion of  the  day  before  yesterday. 

14-33:0,  x,h  (cf.  159,  11-160,2).  14-274,  26:  g. 


274  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

In  every  one  of  these  cases,  and  in  all  other  cases  where, 
through  ignorance,  haste,  or  false  ideas  of  economy,  the 
vocation  of  enlightened  citizenship  has  been  left  out  of  ac- 
count, the  individual  suffers  much,  but  the  State  suffers 
5  more.  Whether  the  citizen  does  the  best  of  which  he  is 
capable,  or  the  second  best,  is  a  matter  of  concern  not  only 
to  himself,  but  to  the  community  and  the  nation.  Whether 
from  the  individual  point  of  view  or  the  social,  enlightened 
citizenship  is  the  first  and  the  greatest  vocation. 

10  The  vocation  of  enlightened  citizenship  does  not  look  to 
the  holding  of  a  position  as  the  prime  object;  it  looks  rather 
to  excellence  in  the  holding  of  it.  The  ideal  of  the  great 
vocation  is  not  immediate  success  in  the  earning  of  a  living, 
but  the  capacity  to  earn  it  with  the  greatest  intelligence 

15  and  the  greatest  measure  of  success.  It  looks  forward  to 
the  professional  man  or  the  mechanic  developed  to  the  full 
capacity  of  his  powers.  Its  aim  is  not  the  exploitation  of 
talent,  but  the  development  of  personal  excellence  and  total 
usefulness.  It  looks  ahead,  not  four  years,  but  forty  years. 

20  It  looks  to  a  substantial  and  enduring  edifice,  not  a  tem- 
porary and  makeshift  shelter.  It  does  not  ask,  "  How 
much  are  you  going  to  earn  ?  "  or  even  "  How  much  are  you 
going  to  know  ?  "  but  "  Are  you  going  to  make  of  yourself 
all  that  is  possible  ?  "  and  "  Are  you  going  to  be  a  leader  ?  " 

25  Its  ambition  is  not  the  production  of  the  average,  but  of 
leadership. 

Progress  is  only  secondarily  a  matter  of  the  crowd.  The 
religious  or  civic  ideals  of  an  age  or  a  community  are  not 
determined  by  the  common  man.  It  is  the  exceptional  man, 

30  the  reformer,  the  enthusiast,  the  personality  in  which  the 
age  or  the  community,  so  to  speak,  flowers  out,  that  deter- 
mines the  ideal.  The  supreme  concern  of  the  army  is  its 
general,  of  the  church  its  prophet,  of  the  world  of  knowl- 

10-26  :  c,  x.  27-275,  5  :  c,  q,  x. 


GRANT  SHOWERMAN  275 

edge  the  scholar,  of  mechanics  the  inventor.  Progress  is  a 
matter  of  dynamics.  Without  leadership — without  men  who 
think  enough  more,  feel  enough  more,  see  enough  farther 
than  the  ordinary  to  give  them  authority — there  are  no 
dynamics,  and  there  will  be  no  progress.  5 

Vocational  training  in  the  ordinary  sense  is,  within  limits, 
desirable  and  necessary;  but  its  place  is  in  the  technical 
school,  not  in  the  school  of  liberal  arts.  The  high  school  is 
the  people's  college,  but  not  the  people's  business  college. 
If  it  is  a  business  college  at  all,  it  is  the  business  college  of  10 
the  State  at  large,  not  that  of  the  comparatively  few  sons 
and  daughters  of  the  people  whose  first  ambition  is  a  liveli- 
hood. The  prime  business  of  State  education  is  a  universal 
business,  and  Big  Business  is  the  business  of  enlightened 
citizenship.  Every  displacement  of  a  liberal  study  by  a  voca-  15 
tional  study  is  prejudicial  to  the  ideal  interests  of  the  com- 
monwealth. Livelihoods  can  be  trusted  to  take  care  of 
themselves,  if  we  must  choose;  but  enlightened  citizenship 
cannot. 

6-19 :  x,  n. 

i>2,  3,  4,  5,  6,8,  n,  12. 


JAMES  HUNEKER 
1860- 

WAS  LESCHETIZKY  A  GREATER  TEACHER  THAN  LISZT  P1 

THE  first  piano  artist  to  make  known  in  America  the 
name  of  the  late  Theodor  Leschetizky  was  Fannie  Bloom- 
field-Zeisler.  This  was  in  July,  1885,  at  the  Academy  of 
Music,  where  the  slender,  black-haired,  big-eyed  girl  from 
5  Chicago  played  Rubinstein's  D  minor  piano  concerto  with 
a  briliancy  of  style  and  dramatic  delivery  that  fairly  daz- 
zled her  audience.  To  be  sure,  she  took  the  bit  between 
her  teeth  in  the  last  movement  and  ended  in  a  magnificent 
display  of  rhythmic  recklessness,  though  happily  the  Thomas 
10  Orchestra  and  the  pianist  passed  the  winning  stakes  neck 
by  neck.  The  occasion  was  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Music 
Teachers'  National  Association,  so  the  pianists  present  were 
as  plentiful  as  blackberries  in  season. 

Who  was  her  master?  was  the  universal  question.    Here 
15  was  a  girl  in  her  teens  who,  granting  her  natural  musical 
endowments,  had  been  well  schooled.     Thus  the  name  of 
Leschetizky  became  a  household  one,  and  about  six  years 
later  his  fame  was  established  with  the  advent  of  Ignace 
Jan  Paderewski.     Of  course  the  piano-playing  world  had 
20  heard  of  Leschetizky  as  the  first  great  teacher  since  Liszt ; 
rather   pedagogue,    for   Liszt   often   and   disdainfully   dis- 
claimed being  a  "  piano  teacher."     Evidently  a  man  who 
could    turn    out    two    such    widely    disparate    talents    as 
1  The  New  York  Times,  November  28,  1915. 
1-13  :  e,  n. 
276 


JAMES  HUNEKER  277 

Bloomfield-Zeisler  and  Paderewski — temperamentally  and 
technically  poles  asunder — must  be  a  rare  master,  and  thus 
with  Fannie  Bloomfield's  return  to  her  native  land  prac- 
tically began  the  Leschetizky  vogue  here,  a  vogue  that  grew 
rapidly  and  still  promises  to  continue.  5 

Not  so  many  years  ago,  four  or  five,  I  saw  a  gay,  slender 
old  gentleman,  with  white  beard  and  hair,  gracefully 
dancing  in  the  Kur-Saal  at  Carlsbad.  Few  pretty  girls 
escaped  his  invitation.  Light  on  his  toes,  his  eyes  ablaze 
with  the  intoxication  of  the  music,  this  young-old  chap  10 
danced  with  diabolical  vivacity.  It  was  Theodor  Lesche- 
tizky, fourscore  in  years,  with  a  youthful  heart  and  rhythmic 
heels.  No  wonder  his  pupils  play  with  such  rhythmic 
spirit;  rhythm  was  in  the  very  marrow  of  his  bones.  A 
Pole,  his  great  span  of  years  had  enabled  him  to  study  with  15 
the  master-pedagogue  of  the  piano;  good,  old  industrious 
Carl  Czerny  (a  name  abominated  by  many  generations  of 
child  students)  and  theory,  with  Sechter.  He  was  born 
in  1830,  a  few  years  after  Beethoven's  death,  and  might 
have  heard  Chopin  play  if  he  had  been  in  Paris.  Pade-  20 
rewski  paid  a  beautiful  tribute  to  his  memory  a  few  days 
ago  for  the  benefit  of  the  readers  of  The  Times, 
and  told  us  ,of  SchulhofFs  influence  upon  the  playing  of 
Leschetizky.  He  could  have  added,  and  also  upon  his 
style  in  composition.  Julius  Schulhoff  was  a  Bohemian  25 
(1825-1898)  and  interested  Chopin  so  much  that  he 
advised  him  to  give  a  concert  in  Paris,  which  he  did 
in  1845.  He  was  essentially  a  drawing-room  virtuoso 
with  a  fine  singing  touch  and  a  style  of  extreme  polish.  To 
the  past  generation  he  was  chiefly  known  as  the  composer  30 
of  "  Souvenir  de  Kiew."  Leschetizky,  himself  a  lyric  com- 
poser, also  indulged  in  the  elegant,  if  somewhat  shallow, 
pieces  beloved  of  his  epoch. 

6-18  :  w.  6-33  :  v,  n. 


278  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

It  was  in  1839  that  Franz  Liszt  gave  his  first  piano  re- 
cital, and  possessing  a  striking  profile  he  boldly  presented  it 
to  his  audience;  before  that  time  pianists  either  faced  or 
sat  with  their  backs  to  the  public.  No  matter  what  avenue 
5  of  music  the  piano  student  travels  he  is  sure  to  fetch  up 
before  the  figure  of  Liszt.  However,  artistic  piano  playing 
is  no  longer  rare.  The  once  jealously  guarded  secrets  of  the 
masters  have  become  the  property  of  the  conservatories. 
Now  self-playing  instruments  perform  technical  miracles, 

10  and  are  valuable  inasmuch  as  they  stimulate  the  interest 
of  a  number  of  persons  who  otherwise  would  avoid  music 
as  an  insoluble  mystery.  Furthermore,  the  unerring  ease 
with  which  these  machines  dispatch  the  most  appalling  dif- 
ficulties has  turned  the  attention  toward  what  is  most  sig- 

15  nificant  in  a  musical  performance :  touch  and  tone,  phrasing 
and  interpretation.  While  a  child's  hand  may  set  spinning 
the  Don  Juan  Fantasie  of  Liszt,  no  machine  contrived  can 
play  a  Chopin  Ballade,  say,  or  a  Schumann  Concerto  as 
they  should  be  played.  I  mention  these  cunning  inventions 

20  because  I  believe  they  send  many  persons  to  piano  recitals. 
Never  before  has  the  standard  of  execution  and  interpre- 
tation been  so  high.  But  now  technique  is  no  longer  the 
controlling  factor.  Whether  one  is  a  Rosenthal,  a  De  Pach- 
mann,  or  a  Godowsky  (and  the  last  is  not  least!)  he  cannot 

25  escape  comparisons  with  the  mechanical  piano-players.  It 
is  their  astounding  accuracy  that  extorted  from  Eugen 
d'Albert  the  remark  that  "  a  great  pianist  should  no  longer 
bother  himself  about  technique.  Any  machine  can  beat  him 
at  the  game.  What  he  must  excel  in  is  interpretation/' 

30  Which  is  a  commonplace  of  criticism.  Leschetizky's  posi- 
tion in  this  matter  will  be  presently  elucidated. 

The  giant  wave  of  pianistic  virtuosity  that  broke  over 
Europe  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  has  not  receded, 

1-31  :  k  (cf.  126,  28-127,  32). 


JAMES  HUNEKER  279 

though  Paderewski  is  right  in  saying  that  brilliancy  for 
the  sheer  sake  of  brilliancy  is  no  longer  cultivated.  Liszt 
was  the  greatest  of  all  pianists.  He  had  head,  heart,  and 
hand — that  triune  perfection  of  which  Carl  V.  Lachmund 
wrote  when  he  apportioned  to  Tausig  the  hand,  to  Anton  5 
Rubinstein  the  heart,  to  Von  Biilow  the  head.  Liszt  alone 
boasted  all  three.  When  Von  Biilow  visited  America  in 
1876  he  told  Albert  Ross  Parsons,  a  distinguished  peda- 
gogue and  pupil  of  Tausig,  that  as  a  pianist  he  did  not 
pretend  to  compete  with  such  men  as  Liszt  and  Tausig;  10 
and,  oddly  enough,  Rubinstein  said  the  same  thing  to  Mr. 
Parsons,  complaining  that  as  he  gave  so  many  concerts  he 
had  no  time  for  such  exhaustive  study  as  Karl  Tausig. 
Now  during  the  same  season,  1876,  that  the  cerebral  Von 
Biilow  patrolled  the  keyboard  in  New  York,  pecking  with  15 
that  irritatingly  dry  touch  of  his  at  the  Beethoven  sonatas, 
a  certain  attractive-looking  Russian  woman  named  Annette 
Essipoff  (in  Russian,  Essipowa)  played  not  only  technically 
better  than  Von  Biilow,  but  thrice  as  beautifully.  Her  first 
master  had  been  Wielhorski,  her  second  Leschetizky,  whose  20 
wife  she  became  in  1880.  But  her  successful  appearance  did 
not  bring  to  public  notice  here  the  name  of  Leschetizky. 

The    very    muscular   power   of    Liszt   set    piano   manu- 
facturers to  experimenting.    A  new  instrument  was  literally 
made  for  him,  an  instrument  that  could  thunder  like  an  25 
orchestra,  sing  like  the  human  voice,  and  whisper  like  a 
harp.    Liszt  proudly  boasted :  "  le  piano,  c'est  moi !  "    With 
it  he  needed  no  orchestra,  no  singers,  no  scenery;  it  was 
his  stage,  and  upon  its  wires  he  told  the  stories  of  the 
operas,  sang  the  novel  lieder  of  Schubert  and  Schumann,  30 
revealed   the   mighty  music  of   Beethoven,   the  poetry  of 
Chopin,  and  Bach's  magical  mathematics.     He  set  musical  , 
Europe  ablaze;  even  Paganini  was  forgotten,  while  Thal- 
2-22  :  j,  w,  e.  23-280,  16  :  c. 


280  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

berg  and  his  gentlemanly  playing  suddenly  became  insipid 
to  true  music  lovers.  Liszt  was  sometimes  called  a 
charlatan,  he  often  played  for  effect,  for  the  sake  of  daz- 
zling the  groundlings.  His  tone  was  massive,  his  touch 
5  colored  by  a  thousand  shades  of  emotion,  his  fire  and  fury 
overwhelming.  Nevertheless,  the  late  William  Mason,  cer- 
tainly a  competent  authority,  asserted  more  than  once  that 
Liszt's  touch  was  hard  because  he  had  so  long  played  in 
the  broad  orchestral  manner.  The  truth  is  that  Liszt's  touch 

10  was  anything  he  chose  to  make  of  it.  As  to  his  technique, 
he  seemed  to  the  youthful  Maurice  Rosenthal  a  trifle  old- 
fashioned.  Speed,  endurance,  and  power  he  had  not  when 
Rosenthal  heard  him  in  the  early  eighties,  but  in  his  prime 
he  was  an  impeccable  artist.  His  pupils,  Tausig  and  Von 

15  Biilow,  were  totally  different  as  to  styles  (Anton  Rubin- 
stein was  never  an  accredited  pupil,  though  he  profited  by 
Liszt's  advice  and  regarded  him  as  a  model). 

Tausig,  the  greatest  virtuoso  after  Liszt  and  his  equal  at 
many  points,  died  prematurely.    Never  had  the  world  heard 

20  such  plastic,  objective  interpretations.  His  iron  will  had 
so  drilled  his  Slavic  temperament  (he  was  born  of  Jewish 
parents  in  Warsaw,  Poland)  that  his  playing  was,  as  the 
late  Rafael  Joseffy  said,  "  a  series  of  perfectly  painted  pic- 
tures." His  technique — perfection.  He  was  the  one  pianist 

25  "  sans  peur  et  sans  reproche."  All  schools  were  at  his  call. 
Chopin  was  revived  when  Tausig  played  him.  And  he  was 
the  first  to  hail  the  rising  star  of  Brahms — not  critically, 
as  did  Schumann,  but  practically,  by  putting  his  name  on 
his  eclectic  programmes.  Mr.  Parsons  says  that  Tausig's 

30  playing  evoked  the  image  of  a  glorious  mountain.  "  And 
Joseffy  ?  "  I  queried — for  Joseffy  was  Tausig's  favorite 
pupil.  "  The  lovely  mist  that  envelops  the  mountain  at 
dusk,"  was  the  happy  reply.  Of  the  heaven-storming  Ru- 

2-17  :  j,  n.  24-26  :  b.  18-281,  14:  v  (cf.  244,  3-31)- 


JAMES  HUNEKER  281 

binstein  Joseffy  once  said  to  me  that  his  tone  was  as  golden 
as  a  French  horn.  Von  Biilow  was  an  ideal  pedagogue. 
He  had  Teutonic  thoroughness,  his  brain  was  compartment- 
ized,  if  I  may  employ  a  fabricated  word,  and  from  it  at 
command  popped  any  composer  demanded.  Truly  a  monu-  5 
mental  memory,  his.  Yet  the  three  most  beautiful  piano 
touches  of  the  nineteenth  century  were  not  those  of  Liszt, 
Tausig,  or  Von  Biilow,  but  were  possessed  by  Chopin, 
Thalberg,  and  Henselt ;  touches  that  sang  and  melted  in  the 
memory,  ravished  the  ears.  Finer  in  a  vocal  sense  was  10 
the  touch  of  Thalberg  than  the  touch  of  Liszt,  finer  Hen- 
selt's  than  Thalberg's,  because  more  euphonious,  and  nobler 
in  tonal  texture;  and  more  poetic  than  either  of  these  was 
the  ethereal  touch  of  Chopin,  genius  of  the  piano. 

This  brief  glance  at  his  forerunners  as  virtuosi  and  peda-  15 
gogues  (naturally  I  don't  mean  Joseffy  or  the  men  of  his 
generation)  brings  us  to  the  unique  position  in  art  occu- 
pied by  Theodor  Leschetizky.     His  was  an  eclectic  tem- 
perament.    He  mastered   the  Liszt,   Tausig,  Von   Biilow, 
Rubinstein  gambits  in  the  chess  play  of  piano  interpreta-  20 
tion.    A  very  Daniel  come  to  judgment  on  all  schools.    His 
pupils  tell  us  that  his  playing  was  superb.    His  touch  and 
tone  have  been  praised  by  Paderewski,  than  whom  no  one 
is  better  qualified  as  a  critic.     He  spied  upon — using  the 
word  in  its  better  estate — the  styles  of  all  pianists.     He  25 
knew  the  secrets   of  tone  production   from  the   vigorous 
fortissimo  of  Rubinstein  to  the  evanescent  pianissimo  of 
De  Pachmann.     Phrasing  and  interpretation  were  at  his 
command.     Madame  Teresa  Carreno  once  saw  him  listen- 
ing when  she  first  played  the  Grieg  concerto  in  Vienna.  30 
He  absorbed  from  every  source.    Nothing  escaped  his  om- 
nivorous, may  I  say,  ear !     He  knew  why  Chopin  com- 
plained of  a  pain  in  the  back  near  the  neck  after  he  had 
2-14 :  p,  r.  21 :  e,  b.  31-282,  8  :  e,  w. 


282  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

played  much,  and  not  in  his  wrist  or  fingers — the  action  of 
the  triceps  muscles,  then  a  secret  to  most  pedagogues.  He 
studied  each  individual  hand  as  he  studied  each  tempera- 
ment. That  was  the  secret  of  his  success.  You  might 

5  stand  yourself  on  your  head  in  Liszt's  presence,  so  little  did 
he  care  about  piano  technique — he  took  it  for  granted— 
but  not  so  with  Leschetizky.  All  his  pupils  have  a  firm 
seat  in  the  saddle,  if  I  may  employ  again  a  sporting  phrase. 
Strictly  speaking,  he  had  no  method;  rather,  his  method 

10  varied  with  the  idiosyncrasies  of  each  pupil.  Paderewski 
has  told  us  this,  and  in  a  very  valuable  book  for  students, 
"  Great  Pianists  on  Piano  Playing,"  by  James  Francis 
Cooke,  we  find  Madame  Zeisler  declaring  that  "  during  the 
five  years  I  was  with  Leschetizky  he  made  it  very  plain 

15  that  he  had  no  fixed  method  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the 
word.  ...  It  might  almost  be  said  that  he  had  a  different 
method  for  each  pupil,  and  I  have  often  said  that  Lesche- 
tizky's  method  is  to  have  no  fixed  method.  Of  course, 
there  are  certain  preparatory  exercises  which,  with  slight 

20  variations,  he  wishes  all  his  pupils  to  go  through.  .  .  . 
Leschetizky,  without  any  particular  method,  is  a  great  force 
by  virtue  of  his  tremendously  interesting  personality  and 
his  great  qualities  as  an  artist.  .  .  .  He  laughs  when  one 
speaks  of  his  '  method  '  or  '  system.' );  In  the  same  volume 

25  Josef  Hofmann,  a  pupil  of  Rubinstein,  writes :  "  I  have 
always  been  opposed  to  definite  '  methods  '  .  .  .  methods 
are  a  kind  of  musical  stencil."  Ossip  Gabrilowitsch,  a 
pupil  of  Leschetizky,  says :  "  I  have  never  been  in  favor 
of  the  many  automatic  and  mechanical  methods  of  pro- 

30  ducing  touch,"  and  in  the  preceding  page  he  says :  "  One 
never  could  forget  Leschetizky's  touch."  Mr.  Finck  right- 
fully alludes  to  his  solicitude  in  the  matter  of  the  pedals, 
which  produce  atmospheric  effects. 

281,  15-282,  33  :  k- 


JAMES  HUNEKER  283 

All  the  great  pianists  of  the  day  were  not  pupils  of 
Leschetizky,  and  I  am  far  from  attempting  to  minimize 
his  influence,  which  was,  and  still  is,  profound.  For  ex- 
ample, we  have  with  us  the  ever  poetic  Paderewski,  (his 
pupils,  Felix  Schelling  and  Antoinette  Szumowska-  5 
Adamowski,)  the  many-sided  and  charming  Gabrilowitsch, 
Mark  Hambourg — whose  playing  is  more  in  the  demoniacal 
style  of  Rubinstein  than  the  refined  manner  of  Leschetizky 
(a  tribute  to  that  pedagogue's  versatility) — brilliant  Fannie 
Bloomfield-Zeisler,  Katherine  Goodson,  and  Helen  Hope-  10 
kirk.  There  are  others,  here  and  abroad,  but  the  few  men- 
tioned are  splendid  specimens  of  Leschetizky's  discrimina- 
tion as  a  teaching  artist.  But  New  York  also  harbors  such 
remarkable  pianists  as  Feruccio  Busoni,  Josef  Hofmann, 
Leopold  Godowsky,  Harold  Bauer,  Leonard  Berwick,  15 
Percy  Grainger,  and  Arthur  Friedheim — to  mention  some 
names.  None  of  these  studied  with  Leschetizky.  All  of 
which  proves  anything  or  nothing. 

There  were  great  piano  teachers  before  Leschetizky — 
who,  after  all,  originated  nothing,  but  he  had  a  marvelous  20 
flair  for  talent,  and  its  free  development.     Mr.  Henderson 
has  recently  written  that  "  the  true  Leschetizky  touch  is 
hard,  that  it  produces  a  glassy,  brittle  tone  from  the  piano." 
Who  dare  contradict  this?    It  simply  means  that  Lesche- 
tizky was  not  so  fortunate  in  his  pupils  as  Liszt,  (and  we  25 
have  heard  some  terrifying  "  pet  pupils  "  of  the  Merlin  of 
Weimar,  have  we  not?)     Once,  while  playing  billiards  at 
a  club,  Paderewski  declared  to  me  that  the  only  thing  he 
ever  had  learned  from  his  master  was  to  handle  a  cue.    (If 
so,  then  Leschetizky  deserves  another  brevet  of  pedagogic  30 
excellence,  for  in  those  days  the  Polish  virtuoso  with  the 
golden  nimbus  was  expert  at  the  game.) 

I  fancy  that  the  statement  was  intended  as  a  delicate 

1-18 :  g.  19-27 : 1,  w.  33-284,  24 :  m,  w. 


284  THE  MECHANISM  OF  ENGLISH  STYLE 

rebuke  for  my  rather  futile  question,  and  if  he  meant  any- 
thing at  all  it  was  that  Leschetizky  had  many  methods,  not 
a  hard  and  fast  procrustean  bed  of  a  method — like  the 
Plaidy,  the  Stuttgart,  (Lebert  and  Stark,)  and  so  many 

5  other  conservatory  methods  for  maiming  the  ringers  and 
extirpating  the  intelligence  with  numberless  ringer  exer- 
cises. Whatever  else  it  may  be,  Leschetizky's  method  is 
human.  He  was  a  supreme  psychologist.  Paderewski  also 
told  me  that  he  had  learned  much  from  the  playing  of  that 

10  supersubtle  Slav,  Annette  Essipowa.  As  to  Paderewski's 
assertion  that  the  influence  of  Liszt  and  Rubinstein  in 
"  forming  a  tradition  to  be  carried  on  by  pupils  could  not 
be  compared  to  that  of  Leschetizky,"  it  may  be  set  down  to 
his  loyalty,  an  admirable  trait,  indeed,  yet  hardly  supported 

15  by  facts.  Merely  to  sound  the  roll  call  of  Liszt's  pupils 
disproves  this  belief.  Liszt  had  luck  in  his  pupils,  but  luck 
or  no,  the  Liszt  tradition  o'ertops  the  Leschetizky,  and 
will  do  so  till  the  end  of  musical  history.  So  it  seems  that 
the  famous  Leschetizky  "  method  "  is  no  method  at  all. 

20  Perhaps  the  real  Leschetizky  method  was  his  penchant  for 
marrying  his  pupils,  and  on  this  pleasing  intimate  note  let 
us  salute  his  august  shade,  which  we  hope  is  now  dancing 
in  a  musical  paradise  where  divorce  and  piano-playing 
are  no  longer  tolerated  by  the  eternal  powers. 
1,4,5,9, 11,12,13,14. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

BALDWIN,  C.  S.    "  How  to  Write.    A  Handbook  based  on  the  Eng- 
lish Bible."    New  York,  Macmillan,  1905. 
BALDWIN,  C.   S.    "A  College  Manual  of  Rhetoric."     New  York, 

Longmans,  1906. 
BATES,   ARLO.    "Talks   on   Writing  English."     Boston,   Houghton, 

1898. 
BREWSTER,  W.  T.    "  Representative  Essays  on  the  Theory  of  Style." 

New  York,  Macmillan,  1905. 
BREWSTER,  W.  T.,  and  CARPENTER,  G.  R.    "  Studies  in  Structure  and 

Style."     New  York,  Macmillan,  1899. 
COOPER,  LANE.    "  Theories  of  Style."    New  York,  Macmillan,  1907. 

(This  contains  a  full  and  valuable  bibliography.) 
FOWLER,  (H.  W.  and  F.  G.).    "The  King's  English."    London  and 

New  York,  Oxford,  second  edition,  1908. 
GENUNG,  JOHN  FRANKLIN.    "  The  Working  Principles  of  Rhetoric." 

Boston,  Ginn,  1901. 
GENUNG,  J.  F.    "The  Practical  Elements  of  Rhetoric."     Boston, 

Ginn,  1902. 
LAMONT,  HAMMOND.    "  English  Composition."    New  York,  Scribner, 

1906. 
LEWES,  G.  H.    "  The  Principles  of  Success  in  Literature."    Ed.  F.  N. 

Scott.    Boston,  Allyn  &  Bacon,  1892. 

LONG,  PERCY  W.    "  Studies  in  the  Technique  of  Prose  Style."    Cam- 
bridge, privately  printed,  1915. 

MINTO,  W.  "  A  Manual  of  Prose  Literature."  Boston,  Ginn,  1901. 
SHERMAN,  L.  A.  "Analytics  of  Literature."  Boston,  Ginn,  1893. 
SMITH,  LEWIS  WORTHINGTON,  and  THOMAS,  JAMES  E.  "  Modern 

Composition  and  Rhetoric."    Boston,  Sanborn,  1901. 
WENDELL,  BARRETT.    "English  Composition."    New  York,  Scribner, 

1908. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Addison,  Joseph,  44 

"  Adolescence,"  H.  G.  Wells,  184 

Antithesis,   18 

"Arcadia,"      story      from,     Sir 

Philip   Sidney,  85 
Articulating  words,  20 
Attention,  economy  of,  41 

B 

Beauty,  20 

Belloc,  Hilaire,  45 

Birrell,  Augustine,  "  Truth- 
Hunting,"  171 

"Bunyan,  John,"  T.  B.  Macau- 
lay,  108 


Cadence,  52,  53 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  "The  Opera," 

101 

Century,   The,  43 
Chesterton,    G.    K,    "Tolstoi," 

201 

Coherence,  32 
Connotation,   18,  35,  36 
Connotative  words,   16,   19 
Curtis,   G.    W.,   "The   Howadji 
in   Syria,"   143 


Denham,  Sir  John,  44 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  "Levana 
and  Our  Lady  of  Sorrows,"  92 
Dryden,  John,  40 


Ecclesiastical      Polity,      Laws 
of,"  20 


Economy  of  attention,  20 
"Efficient,     Is     it    Wrong    for 

Good  People  to  Be?",  G.  S. 

Lee,  213 
Emerson,         Ralph         Waldo, 

"Gifts,"  138 
Emphasis,  17,  18,  20 
"English  Admirals,  The,"  R.L. 

Stevenson,  156 
Euphony,  20 
Evening  Post,  New  York,  246 

F 

Fancy   and   imagination,   57 

Figures,  43 

"Flanders,  The  Little  Villages 

of,"  £.  Verhaeren,  221 
Franklin,  77 


"Galsworthy,  John,"  review  in 

New  York  Sun,  250 
Gettysburg  Speech,  30 
"  Gifts,"  R.  W.  Emerson,  138 
Grahame,   Kenneth,  48 

H 

Harte,  Bret,  42 

Hawthorne,    Nathaniel,    extract 

from    "The    Scarlet    Letter," 

125 

Hewlett,  Maurice,  50 
Hooker,   Bishop,  20 
"  Howadji    in    Syria,    The,"    G. 

W.  Curtis,  143 
Humor,  42 
Huneker,     James,     "Was     Le- 

schetizky    a    Greater   Teacher 

than  Liszt?",  276 


289 


2QO 


INDEX 


Hyde,  Edward,  Earl  of  Claren- 
don, 51 


Questions  for  study,  79,  81 


Imagery,  20 
Independent,  The,  28 


James,   Henry,   "  The   Refugees 

in  England,"  233 
Jeffrey,    Francis,   30 


Laws  of  writing,  3 

Lee,  Gerald  Stanley,  "Efficient, 
Is  it  Wrong  for  Good  People 
to  Be?",  213 

Le  Gallienne,  Richard,  13 

"  Leschetizky  a  Greater  Teacher 
than  Liszt,  Was?",  J.  Hu- 
neker,  276 

"  Levana  and  Our  Lady  of  Sor- 
rows," T.  De  Quincey,  92 

Lincoln,  A.,  30 

M 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  "John  Bun- 
yan,"  108 

"  Marius  the  Epicurean,"  Wal- 
ter Pater,  25 

Mass,  the  principle  of,  27 

Mirror,  The,  33 

N 

Newman,  Cardinal,  7 
New  Republic,  The,  262 
Norris,  Frank,  37 


"Opera,   The,"   T.   Carlyle,   101 

P 

Parallelism,   18,  19 
Parker,  Theodore,  31 
Pater,   Walter,   25 
Poe,  E.  A.,  7 


"  Refugees    in    England,    The/ 

Henry  James,  233 
Reedy,  William  Marion,  33 
Rhythm,   47 
Robespierre,   31 


"  Scarlet  Letter,"  extract  from, 
N.  Hawthorne,  125 

"  School-ma'am  "    English,    65 

Scribner's  Magazine,  64 

Sentences,  23;  length  of,  26; 
periodic,  27,  29,  30;  loose,  29 

Shakespeare,  4 

Showerman,  Grant,  "  The  Great 
Vocation,"  267 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  story  from 
"Arcadia,"  85 

Spencer,   Herbert,   20 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  5;  "The  Eng- 
lish Admirals,"  156 

Structure,  76 

Student  themes,  72 

Style,  qualities  of,  u;  personal, 
12;  impersonal,  12;  philoso- 
phy, 20;  good  style,  75 

Sun,  New  York,  "John  Gals- 
worthy," 250 

Swinburne,  A.  C,  44,  49 


Thompson,  Maurice,  62 
Thomson,  James,  44 
Times,  New  York,  31,  276 
"Tolstoi,"  G.  K.  Chesterton, 201 
Transcript,  Boston,  221 
"Triumph,    The    Great,"    New 

York  Evening  Post,  246 
"  Truth-Hunting,"        Augustine 

Birrell,  171 


U 

Undergraduate,      The," 
New  Republic,  262 


The 


INDEX 


291 


Unity,  74 
Usage,  61 

"Vandover     and     the     Brute," 

Frank  Norris,  37 
Verhaeren,  Emile,   "The  Little 

Villages  of  Flanders,"  221 
"Vocation,   The    Great,"    Grant 

Showerman,  267 


W 

Walpole,  Horace,  44 

Webster,   31 

Wells,    H.    G.,    "Adolescence/ 

184 

Whimsicality,  42 
Words,  35;  articulating,  38 
World's  Work,  The.  38 


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